Hide and Seek
by Vernon Scannell
This poem is, on the surface, about a man remembering how he played hide and seek as a boy. Underneath that initial memory, though, the speaker is exploring his ideas about loneliness and how it feels to be abandoned, and even to die.
Literary Techniques
Single stanza poem
First and second person narrative
Some rhyming couplets: out/shout (lines 4/5) and coat/throat (lines 19/20)
Alliteration helps the tone of the reader's voice to fluctuate between excitement ('c'), oppressive ('d'), and to capture the sounds of the sea.
The single (unbroken stanza) and the sound of the sea could lead one to talk about the relentless flow of the sea.. and the relentless movement of childhood experience towards adult understanding)
Alliteration of 'd' : 'dark dank' creates a heavy, oppressive tones
Alliteration of 'c' : 'call out, call out' creates a sense urgency, almost like a bird cry.
Alliteration of the 's': 'smells like seaside' and 'smells of sand'(the sound of the waves and wind?)
Sibilance (repeated 's' sound) of 's' throughout poem (sound of the sea..)
Personification; "The darkening garden watches...." and "the bushes hold their breathe" - creates the ominous feeling that the nature world is waiting quietly and so participating in the experience. There is no joy in this wait... for the garden is 'darkening.'
Concept and Themes
Who didn't/doesn’t enjoy playing hide and seek? Do you remember the feeling of hiding in the cupboard, holding your breath, stopping the giggles, in a darkness that seemed at once soft and a bit scary?
Scannell encourages us to remember such memories and to layer them into his poem.
Be careful, though, the poem is asking you to do more than just experience the game with the boy. Scannell requires of us that we seek the message hidden within the three stages of the boy's experience: 1) the tension of hiding from children who 'prowl' 2) the joy of declaring oneself a winner 3) the hollow emptiness of realising one has been abandoned.
Themes: childhood, excitement, loneliness, nostalgia for childhood friends, death (?).
Voice:
First person narrator: The first person narrator is writing from the perspective of 'I'
Second person narrator: the second person narrator speaks to the main character as 'you.' This allows the reader to 'become/imagine they are' the main character.
In this poem we have to find out who is hiding in the poem. Is it an older person speaking to a younger version of himself? Is it an invisible, even internal, presence advising the child? Either way, we have to question why this second person narrator is interested in telling the experience and talking to the boy.
First Person (I)
Call out, call out loud -
"I"m ready. Come and find me"
The juxtaposition of the desire to call out loud when you're meant to be quiet captures the double-bind of the game: the need to hide and the desire to be found, to be noticed, to exist.
There is the possibility that he shouts these words, as later on the speaker advises "better not risk another shouting." If the boy did shout these words ('"I'm ready. Come and find me.") then he was taking "a risk." This possibility increases the sense of fear and anticipation.
Second Person
Now look again at 'call out'.' This is written by someone speaking to the boy.... but then, no, also to us:
You mustn't sneeze...
Be careful that you're feet aren't sticking out...
Don't breathe, don't move, stay dumb
This advice is both logical and yet also a little creepy: stay dumb.
A person who is dumb is someone who is unable to speak, who is mute. In this way, the speaker no longer has control over his own voice.
At the same time, 'don't breathe...dumb' is an example of parataxis - when clauses, sentences are aligned without conjunctions like and or but. Here it creates an impression of urgency and the idea that the speaker is controlling the boy.
At the same time, the voice tells 'us':
And here they are, whispering at the door,
You've never heard them so hushed before.
Think: why would the children hunting have to be so quiet? What are they afraid of? If someone is 'hushed' it implies they have been told to be quiet or that something is making them be quiet. Are they frightened to enter the shed?
Is the boy hiding in a place which frightens children?
Physical discomfort
Your legs are stiff, cold bites through your coat,
dank dark smell of sand moves in your throat.
Look at the writer's choice of words. The cold is personified and is biting through 'your' coat... and the image of the stiff legs and sand in 'your' throat is deadly in its implications. Is the speaker suggesting that the boy (you) is metaphorically buried in the dark silence of his wooden box/shed/coffin? Remember, he is told to "Hide in (his) blindness." Coupled with the idea he is "mute"... and we have a very dark image of the boy.
Uncurling
The ending is anticlimactic.... because he has been abandoned.
Yet, the realisation is dark and the second person speaker steps back with the full force of adult maturity. Read the last 7 lines:
"It's time to let them know you are the winner
Push off the sacks, uncurl and stretch
That's better. Out of the shed and call to them -
I've won! Here I am! Come and own up! I've caught you"
Note the excitement of the inversion. He is the 'winner' and he has caught those who were 'prowling' after him.
Very paternal feeling from the second person narrator. He feels the same relief as the boy: that's better. The line between memory and external description is very thin here... but this moment is made to be broken with the last lines:
The darkening garden watches, nothing stirs,
The bushes hold their breathe, the sun is gone
Yes, here you are - But where are those who sought you?
Note, the last question might be to the boy, but equally (in a moment of internal monologue) it might also be the speaker asking himself
The answer lies in your interpretation of who is hiding in the poem.
A boy simply playing hide and seek... 'they' have gone back home
A memory of the second person narrator as a boy ... they are his lost childhood friends, ones who abandoned him too soon (and so left him a very lonely little boy)
Either way, the emptiness at the end of the poem echoes. The boy experiences a moment of profound loneliness ... and one that could be considered a fundamental element of any one person's life.
Imagery.
Can you find words/description in the text which capture these contrasting images?
Dark and light
Noise and silence
Childhood pleasures and fears
Isolation as something that is both positive and negative
