Hide and Seek – Vernon Scannell

Vernon Scannell is a British poet and author. His poem, ‘Hide and Seek’ deals with a childhood incident, a
game, where a boy cautiously hides from his peers. He is hiding in a shed while the others look for him. The
main theme of this poem is isolation. There are a few sub themes as well, such as difficulties in life,
competition and abandonment. The poet uses a vast amount of literary devices, like similes, metaphors and
personification, and writes the poem as an extended metaphor for life. He also uses a variety of punctuation
which helps build up tension throughout the poem.

Vernon Scannel's poem has two meanings. The obvious one is about a child playing hide and seek and
then realizing that his friends have left him, showing abandonment. But the deeper meaning of this poem is
that the poet is actually describing what happens in life. As he shows the child starting out with full
confidence at the beginning of the game, he means to say that when someone starts off a new life they are
confident and strong ('I'm ready! Come and find me!'). The exclamation marks show the child is full of
energy and assurance that he cannot lose the game and if we go deeper we can see that someone who starts
a new life will have the same attitude.

The poem ‘Hide and Seek’ describes a childhood game, tracking the stages of excitement, discomfort and
loneliness that the child experiences. But childhood games imitate adult behaviour and reflect the
complexity of adult emotions. It can therefore be read as an extended metaphor for the aspirations of
maturity, the urge to grasp at opportunities, but the discomfort, anxieties and even betrayal that this
involves. It is a comment on life’s challenges and disappointments. So, the poem uses the game as an
extended metaphor to depict apprehension and desire of growing up and seizing opportunities.

The poem can also be interpreted as the narrator talking to a child, who is hiding in a ‘toolshed’, telling
him what to do. The person giving instructions could be, the poet imagining the child hiding, the child now
an adult thinks about how it would be to play as a child talking to himself.

The first line of the poem is an instruction from the poetic voice or the narrator’s ‘Call out. Call loud.’
This is a double imperative from the narrator to the character in the poem. This could sound dictatorial, but
the voice advises the boy wisely throughout the poem. Thus the voice becomes a helpful friend to the child.

The poem starts with the confident and bold challenge of a child who has chosen a clever place to hide and
is very confident that his seekers will not find him. He is self-satisfied and pleased with himself. In his
childish excitement he calls out, ‘I’m ready Come and find me!’. The boy is hiding in a toolshed that
‘smells like the seaside.’ This refers to his experience at the seaside during the holidays.
Sibilance in line 2 ‘sacks’ and ‘smell’ emphasizes the atmosphere where he hides.

The line ‘they will never find you in this salty dark’ gives a good impression of the child’s hiding place,
with the senses of sight and taste brought into the description. It employs hyperbole which has got several
possible meanings-they may never find the boy because he has found such a good hiding place; they might
not find him because they do not care to look for him- highlighting the isolation and loneliness; or, a darker
possibility is they might not find him- because he cannot be found and he is in danger.

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 Hide and Seek – Vernon Scannell

The searchers will be looking for him in ‘the bushes near the swing,’ here a worldly picture of the
atmosphere and the surroundings are brought to the reader’s mind. Enjambment in the line ‘They’ll
probably be searching/ The bushes near the swing’ speeds up the pace of the poem and shows the
excitement of the child as he hides. The word ‘prowling’ is used to describe his friends, as they try to find
him, with its connotations of a predator seeking prey.. Lines nine through twelve discuss his state when the
other children are so close to finding him. He can hear their voices ‘whispering at the door’ of the tool
shed.. Here, the child then instructs himself to be still and ‘hide’ in his ‘blindness’ to ensure the other
children do not realize that his whereabouts are so close.

Polysyndeton in the line ‘And then the greenhouse and back here again.’ shows that the child is intent
on winning the game. The intensifier ‘very’ in the line ‘They must be thinking that you’re very clever’
gives us a sense of childlike voice. The rhyming couplet in the lines: ‘They must be thinking that you’re
very clever, / Getting more puzzled as they search all over emphasizes the child’s happiness and hope of
the child to win the game. The feeling of triumph is very much revealed in ‘you are very clever… puzzled
as they search over.’

Gradually, he realizes that he has been abandoned, and fear overcomes him due to being isolated in the
dark surroundings. ‘It seems a long time since they went away.’ The fragility and precarious nature of
childhood are depicted here. The triumph can quickly turn into confusion, isolation or sadness. Scannell
uses alliteration to describe how painful the cold is in the personified phrase 'cold bites through your
coat'. The sharp 'c' sound makes us picture how painful the cold is as if it is cutting through the skin.

Asyndeton in the lines ‘Your legs are stiff, the cold bites through your coat;/The dark damp smell of
sand moves in your throat.’ - emphasises that the child has been in the dark for a long time. Alliteration
‘dark damp’ – highlights the oppressive atmosphere of the toolshed. Sibilance ‘smell of sand’ emphasizes
the coarseness of the sand. . The exclamatory sentence ‘Push off the sacks. Uncurl and stretch. That’s
better! - suggests that the child is excited and relieved.

Direct speech by the child in the line ‘…I’ve won! /Here I am! emphasises the proud feeling of the child
that he won the game. His triumph is in stark contrast with the final lines in the poem – ‘the darkening
garden watches.’ The personification of the garden describes it as getting darker or more sinister and
observing the behaviour of the boy. The fact the garden stands back and watches, but does not help the boy
makes him seem even more isolated and friendless.

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 Hide and Seek – Vernon Scannell
The poet uses pathetic fallacy or the technique of using the environment, and especially the weather, to
mirror the character’s feelings – ‘the sun is gone.’ The poem ends with a rhetorical question ‘where are
those who sought you?’ this has the effect of moving the poem from confidence to uncertainty, echoing the
child’s increasing lack of confidence and sense of isolation. The question makes the readers think about
where the other boys have gone. Like the boy, the reader now discovers the truth; his friends have deserted
him.

The poem is in a free verse form, with no particular rhyme scheme. The structure of lines varies
significantly, following no set pattern. There is some use of enjambment, but the majority of lines feature at
least one complete sentence, with some featuring numerous short sentences, The poem makes use of the
sense of smell- ‘smell like the seaside’ touch- ‘the floor is cold,’ and the sense of hearing- ‘whispering,’
‘sound,’ ‘hushed’ to build up the description.

The searchers are introduced using the third person plural ‘they,’ which depersonalizes them. The word
‘prowling’ in line eight, gives a sense of animals hunting their prey to the searchers. ‘Whispering’ and
‘hushed’ refers to the secretive nature of the play.

The short sentences and sharp instructions-‘Don’t breathe….blindness’ in line eleven are commands that
build up tension, but this is then released by the words people ‘stumble’ and ‘laughter’ is heard.

The tone and mood of the poem are not the same. They change during the course of the poem. The tone is
incredibly certain and positive at the beginning. However, his confidence gradually fades away, as the realization
of his abandonment occurs. The mood is analogue to the tone. At first, we can sense the excitement, which
modifies to anxiety and nervousness towards the end

Overall, Vernon Scannell's poem 'Hide and Seek' is based on the children's game 'hide and seek' but is actually
an extended metaphor for facing difficulties in life. Scannell uses a variety of literary skills such as imagery and
use of punctuation to make the reader feel all the emotions the child is going through. The poet makes us feel
cramped when the child is hiding; and lonely and in pain when the cold bothers him and his friends leave him.

One last thing Scannell wants his audience to follow is to grab every opportunity in life, rather than wait too long
and have them go away. In the poem when the child waits too long to uncover himself he is too late because his
friends have already gone. If he would have done it sooner, he might have won the game. In the same way, if you
wait too long to grab an opportunity, you just might miss it altogether.

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