Holy Thursday Experience

• What is the summary of HTE?


  Questions if HT is a holy event due to the children being poor in a wealthy, fertile country. They’re angry at the country and questions why so many children are poor and can see their misery.
• What are the themes explored in HTE?


  Child poverty

  Societies failures

  Society v.s nature
• What is the form/ structure of HTE? 


  4 short quatrains

  Homespin/ driving accentual meter

  ABAB/ABCD rhyme scheme
• Who is the speaker in HTE?


  Speaker is a witness who is outraged by societies evils who works against injustice, poverty and cruelty
• What is the setting in HTE?


  It’s set on a Christian tradition

  Showcases the children’s procession
• What is the context of HTE?

  It’s based on a real event.
• ‘Is this a holy thing to see In a rich and fruitful land?‘

  Rhetorical question.

  Repetition of land throughout- shows the land is both rich and poor.
• ‘Babes reduced to misery, Fed with a cold and usurious hand?


  Emotive language and noun reflects the children’s vulnerabilities.

  this is a rhetorical question
• ‘Is that trembling cry a song? Can it be a song of joy?’


  Irony.

  Rhetorical question.

  Blantantly obvious what the answer is.
• ‘And so many children poor? It is a land of poverty!’ 


  Emotive language/ metaphor - land is poor in genuine human kindness, wisdom and generosity.
• ‘And their sun does never shine, And their fields are bleak and bare, And their ways are filled with thorns: It is eternal winter there.’


  Plosives : ’bleak and bare’

  Metaphor: ‘eternal winter’ shows their perpetual despair.
• ‘For where’er the sun does shine, And where’er the rain does fall, Babes should never hunger there, Nor poverty the mind appal.‘


  Metaphor, concluding their prophetic vision with thunderous parallelism, echoing lang of first stanza.