Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
The poem is narrated in a third-person perspective by an omniscient speaker.
Form and Meter
It is made up of three quatrains alternating with a couplet, a tercet, and one cinquain. The poem is written in free verse with no particular meter.
Metaphors and Similes
The flower bed and picket fences are a metaphor for the teacher’s ideal world he has curated to protect the students' innocence.
Alliteration and Assonance
“past flower beds and white picket fences, / wondering if they would believe that soldiers”
Irony
The teacher holds truths about historical events to protect the innocence of the students yet they exhibit violence and cruelty.
Genre
Satire
Setting
The poem is set within a school and a suburban neighborhood.
Tone
Sarcastic; Comical; Sympathetic
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist of the poem is the teacher. The antagonist is the false lessons the teacher conveys that render the students ignorant and cruel.
Major Conflict
The teacher seeks ways to gloss over historical events to protect the students oblivious of the disservice he does to them.
Climax
The climax occurs after the students bully and torment other schoolmates, and the teacher is still unaware of the negative impact of his lessons.
Foreshadowing
The mention of the Spanish Inquisition, which involved religious persecution, foreshadows the bullying by the students at the playground.
Understatement
The teacher understates the magnitude and immensity of the historical moments and occurrences throughout the poem. For instance, he plays down the Ice Age by comparing it to a typical chilly season.
Allusions
The speaker references several significant events that altered the course of history. The poem alludes to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan during the Second World War by the bomber plane Enola Gay. It also refers to the Boers War that was fought by the Boer states and the British Empire.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
N/A
Personification
The name “The War of the Roses” personifies the roses since they cannot battle.
Hyperbole
The speaker exaggerates the naivety of the teacher as he is unaware of the ineffectiveness of his sugarcoated history lessons.
Onomatopoeia
N/A
