The effect this poem has on me is it makes me realise how lucky and grateful I am because I can afford things and have a lovely life style. However Timothy Winters has the opposite, he is very poor and can’t really afford anything. The poem is based on a little boy called Timothy Winters who is very poor and can’t afford much. The statement for the poem is that Timothy Winters is a poor little boy who cannot afford much and who is not loved by his family. “Timothy Winters has bloody feet”.This suggests that Timothy does not have any shoes maybe because he can’t afford a pair so he has to walk around bare foot and will cut himself and make his feet bleed.
The purpose of the poem is to make us realise how grateful we are and how bad Timothy’s life style is. It also is making us see how poor he is and how he lives a different life to us. The language used in this poem is very emotive.There are lots of emotion language which makes us feel sorry for Timothy. He sleeps in a sack on the kitchen floor”. This sentence makes us feel sorry for Timothy because he has to sleep on the floor in a sack, he may not be able to afford a proper bed.
The layout of the poem is simple. There are 5 stanzas with 4 lines in each stanza. This layout helps the flow of the poem because every two lines rhyme. “comes to school ..
... wide as a football pool” and then the next two lines are “ teeth like splintersoy is Timothy Winters”. This creates the flow and makes the rhythm flow. The audience aimed at this poem is probably teens, because it is making us think that we should be grateful for what we have and not to be greedy because normally teens are spoilt.
The tone of voice I imagine reading this in is a nice emotional calm voice because it is an emotional poem. It talks about how Timothy Winters is poor and how he can’t afford anything and how he gets cold. And through his braces the blue wind blows”. This suggests that he gets cold and doesn’t have anything to cover himself with and the wind blows through his braces. All the techniques used in this poem are hyperbole “with eyes as wide as a football-pool”.
This is hyperbole because it exaggerates because no one’s eyes are as wide as a football pool. That sentence is also a simile because there saying that there as wide as the football pool there saying something is like something.There are also a use of personification and metaphors “And his hair is an exclamation mark”. Firstly that is personification because it’s giving something not real, real features and it’s also a metaphor because its saying his hair is an exclamation mark. It says in the last stanza of the poem “old man Winters likes his beer, And his missus ran off with a bombardier, Grandma sits in the grate with a gin and Timothy’s dosed with an aspirin”.
This suggests that none of his family really care about him.His dad (old man) likes his beer so is obviously an alcoholic and then it says that his missus (his mother) ran off with a bombardier which means that his mum ran away with a feller and left his dad to look after him all alone. Next it says “Grandma sits in the grate with a gin”, which also suggests the grandmother is an alcoholic. Finally it says “Timothy’s dosed with an aspirin”.
This means that they don’t want him to be around so they give him some paracetamol every night because they want him to be all dozy and then go to sleep.All of this suggests that none of their family care about him and are not there for him and when they are they just want him to go to sleep. To conclude, the poem made me feel very sorry for Timothy Winters because he lives in such a rough life style and he can’t afford much. He loves in dirty states and sleeps on the floor.
This makes me feel very thankful that I have everything he doesn’t. Also because people get the wrong impression in Timothy and this must make him feel very upset. I really enjoyed reading this poem even though it was very upsetting to read.
