Francisco Martinez

Both ‘Children in wartime’ and ‘The end of summer’ refer to war, and in my opinion the latter, by Roger McGough, is more powerful in its descriptions. This is because it shows how a normal afternoon can be ruined, and how innocent lives can be ruined in seconds. This poem shows a more “poetic” version of war; it shows how in an indirect way, war takes the lives of many people. The poem is devided in two parts chronologically, the first part describes a normal summer afternoon in London, and the second shows how the people’s lives are ruined by terrorists. The title of the poem is also significant, “The end of summer” shows that the summer is finishing, but not only is the summer over; many people’s lives are over that same day, the day when the summer comes to an end.