Analysis of Prayer before birth, The Tyger and Half past two

by: Alisher Janassayev

English Literature Coursework Prayer Before Birth, The Tyger, and Half-past
Two are poems which explore encounters between the speaker, or a
character, and a force that is greater than he is. How do the three poets
develop and contemplate this experience? Prayer before Birth, The Tyger and
Half-past Two are three poems which explore an encounter between the
character and a force much greater than he is.

The first, by Louis MacNeice, uses imagery of religion and innocence to

present God as a higher power acting above us, whilst The Tyger, by William
Blake, describes the creation of the tiger and who its creator might be, again
showing God as immensely powerful, but in this case he is shown as
intimidating and frightening. Half-past Two, by U. A. Fanthorpe, portrays a
young child, ignorant of the adult measurement of time, and his experience as
he “escaped into the clockless land for ever”; this poem introduces a different
force acting upon the character: time, and the different manners in which we
conceive it.

Louis MacNeice presents God as an important force with power over the
speaker; he does this by making use of liturgical language throughout his
poem. Terms such as “Prayer”, “sin”, “forgive me”, “console me” or “let not”
emphasize this. The way the child asks someone to “hear”, “provide”,
“console” him, as well as the title “Prayer Before Birth”, implies that he is
praying to God to create a better world for him to live in before he is born,
which adds to the biblical language.

Another line which reinforces that the child wants to speak to God is “Let not
[…] who thinks he is God come near me”: this shows that the child wants to
see God and no one else. Another powerful force the poet develops
throughout is that of society and its leaders. The chid begs not to be born into
a world which is devoid of love, compassion and remorse, full of people
prepared to “make [him] a stone”, “make [him] a cog in a machine, a thing with
/ one face, a thing”, or “dissipate [his] entirety”.

This is underlined with the confused, panicky state of mind the character is in,
which is shown by “hither and / thither or hither and thither”, and also the
rhythm of the poem: upbeat and desperate, with lines containing alliterations
such as “strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me”. This latter phrase
particularly emphasizes the unnerved disposition of the character with the
opposition of the strong [d] sound, which reinforces the content+, and the soft,
luring [l].

By the end, the child is so desperate not to be born into such a world, he
makes a firm decision that if his wishes are not possible then “Otherwise kill
me”. The poem was written during World War II, during which countless men
were sent to their death, thus MacNeice also condemns leaders of men who
try to control the world and politicians who force others to kill in their name.
This is shown when the infant says “they murder by the means of my / hands”,
“they live me”, “those who would freeze my / humanity” or “dragoon me into a
lethal automaton”.

This poignant and impressive language goes so far that the baby asks for
forgiveness before he is born. This shows that the greater force is not yet
acting upon him, but will be in the near future, a fact which is reinforced by the
structure of the poem, eight stanzas, which represent eight of the nine months
of pregnancy, so as to show that the child is about to enter the world. The way
by which MacNeice represents the external force as one which will act in the
future is the opposite of D. H.

Lawrence in Piano, who shows the character desiring a force which is no

longer accessible: “I weep like a child for the past”. In The Tyger, William
Blake uses religious language to describe the creation and the creator of the
tiger such as “Lamb”, “heaven” and “skies”: the liturgical language is
comparable to Louis MacNeice, but in Prayer Before Birth, God is shown as
the character’s only hope in a world of despair, whereas Blake uses him to
inspire awe, dread and terror. Thus, the tiger is shown as an embodiment of
God’s power in creation: it is terrifying in its beauty, vitality, strength and
“fearful symmetry”.

Blake also uses the image of god as a blacksmith forging and creating the
spirit, body and brain of the tiger. He uses phrases such as “What the
hammer? ”, “in what furnace was thy brain? ” and “anvil” to paint this image.
This brings up the idea of someone else, an external force, creating our brain,
what we use to control ourselves, and therefore controlling us. Such an idea
reminds us of Prayer Before Birth and the child not wishing to be controlled by
society or by other men.
The idea of an unstoppable force creating, forming us and our world is also
present in Ted Hughes’ ‘Wind’, which presents the weather as a forger of the
landscape with phrases such as “woods crashing through darkness”, “the hills
had new places”, “the fields quivering”. These expressions show how the
storm has deformed and recreated the land, thus bringing back the idea of a
peripheral overwhelming power lurking over us. In both these poems a dark,
heavy atmosphere is present, created by the subjects of death, destruction
and terror with the use of vocabulary such as “burning”, “deadly”, “blood-
baths”, “murder” or “kill”.

This morbid language creates in both texts a fear of unknown forces acting
upon the speaker. However, the two poems present different views of this
force; in Prayer Before Birth, the child is frightened of the world and what lies
outside waiting for him; his fear is much more accentuated as a dark, anxious
terror whereas in The Tyger the narrator is scared of the mysterious God and
his nature, which conveys a more inexplicable awe, because what kind of God
would create such a creature as the tiger? Is it possible that “he who made the
Lamb” made the tiger? If so, what does this say about God?

Throughout the text, many questions are asked but all are left unanswered
which fills the speaker and therefore the reader with doubt and fear of this
unknown power acting upon him, and the way that the first and last stanza are
almost identical create an effect of the reader going around in circles, of an
endless riddle with no definitive answer. Half-past Two presents a young child
who is put in detention by his teacher until half-past two. The latter then
forgets that the infant cannot read the clock, which releases him into a world
without time, and without the constraints of it.

There is much irony and ambiguity in the poem, for instance the fact that
detention, normally a captive environment, sets him free into his world “Where
time hides tick-less waiting to be born. ”. This poem introduces two different
encounters of the character with a force greater than he is: the first is the
teacher, who has control over him, whilst the second, arguably more
important, is time, which he discovers to be infinite and abstract up until the
point when the teacher returns and “slotted him back into schooltime”.

The voice of the poem, combined with the fact that he is unable to remember
why he is being punished – “(I forget what it was)” – introduce the innocence
present in the poem. The voice uses various poetical devices such as
alliteration (“time hides tick-less”), or onomatopoeiae such as “click” or “tick” to
convey the way the child sees and understands time. This innocence is similar
to the other two texts, for instance Prayer Before Birth portrays an unborn
therefore still pure infant, and The Tyger uses imagery of “the Lamb” as an
innocent symbol.

However all three poems use this innocence to contrast and accentuate the
higher power which lies above them, controlling and dominating the
characters. Thus the latter text shows God as a blacksmith, a creator, to show
his control over the power of the tiger while the former depicts the evil world,
its occupants and its leaders as an important force. Half-past Two exposes
time as an uncontrollable and abstract force which dominates our lives. The
onomatopoeia in this poem are but a small part of the way Fanthorpe uses all
the character’s senses to describe the classroom.

Hence, the poet employs a particular oxymoron which conveys great meaning:
“the silent noise”. This demonstrates how time is all around us, silent yet
governing, invisible yet ever-present. John Keats shows similar use of the
sense of sound in his On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer with phrases
such as “speak out loud and bold” or “Silent, upon a peak in Darien”. Keats
and Fanthorpe successfully draw on the senses of the characters to depict the
world around them. U. A.

Fanthorpe makes use of particular rhythmic effects to create a child-like tone

to the poem. The eighth stanza has the repetition of “into” at the start of every
line, which produces a static quality; this is then broken by “And then” at the
beginning of the next stanza. This contrast shows the irregular tone to be
childish; Fanthorpe then pursues this with a similar presentation of the world:
there is no good and no evil. MacNeice and Blake also use the tone of their
poem to present a different view of the world.

The former uses vocabulary such as “blood-sucking”, “traitors”, or “my children

curse me” to create a fear and a darkness which lasts throughout the poem,
this distress portrays a world of built-in corruption and dishonesty. On the
other hand, William Blake uses a tone of fascination and awe with vocabulary
like “immortal hand”, “burning bright” or “heaven”; he thus generates another
view of the world, different to the other two poems: compared to the strength
and the power of the tiger, the rest of the world is innocent and pure.

The themes of these poems vary from the purity of an unborn child who fears
the outside world, to the tremendous power of a wild animal and the God who
created it, to the abstract measurement of time and how our vision of it
changes as we age. Despite the great variety of ideas used by the authors, all
three depict meetings of characters with a greater force in which their future is
sourced; they all show that we are not completely in control of ourselves and
our lives, but that we are manipulated to think, and act, by external influences.