‘The End of Summer’ Poem Mood/Atmosphere Analysis

The poem ‘The End of Summer’ by Roger McGough is about a terrorist

incident where a bomb is left in a department store. On one normal evening,
everything was fine as usual until a person with a bomb decided to ruin it all for
everybody. The author creates the mood/atmosphere by the choice of words,
imagery, and setting. The author uses the right words, imagery, and setting to
describe the mood he wanted the poem to have so when the reader reads the
poem, they would feel the mood and emotion the author tries to portray in the
poem and engage them more to the poem and the story it tells.
The mood at the beginning of the poem is happy and calm, but then the mood
changes and turns into tense and scary. At the start of the poem, it was written
that children were walking “happily home” which shows that the mood was joyful
with imagery that also makes us imagine the smiles on their faces while walking
home. Then the author describes the setting that it was “the end of the day” and
“cool”, giving a calm and relaxing feeling which also shows that it was about to be
night soon. Moreover, the author writes about how the dusk is “slow to gather”
which from this imagery can symbolize something bad is going to happen which in
this case was a bomb going to explode. However, for the second half of the poem,
it was described written that there is “a trembling hand” which shows how scared
and anxious the person who is about to bomb the place is. The writer also writes
about how the situation “underlines the need to kill” which tells us about how
tense the situation is at that time, making the reader imagine how scary the
situation is. At the end of the poem, the writer describes the setting through
adjectives that it was “all cool, and still”, making the reader imagine how people
suddenly became quiet and still after the bombing incident, giving an eerie and
tense feeling.
In conclusion, by using a certain choice of words, using imagery, and setting,
the author can make the mood/atmosphere of the poem. The author used
different techniques such as using a specific choice of words, imagery, and
setting, creating the mood in the ‘The End of Summer’ poem. The author created
the mood in the poem from happy and calm to tense and scary by using all of
these techniques.
Cherillynn Ilysha W 9D/3