Compare the ways the writers' present experiences of different types of difficult situations influence the poems "Half-Past Two" and "War Photographer," with references to language, form, and structure.

"Half-Past Two," by U. A. Fanthorpe, describes the confused, disoriented perspective of a young child kept behind after school for "Something Very Wrong" that he did. The language is childlike and playful. For example, words often run together ("Timeformykisstime . . . onceupona") to mimic the uncertain syntax of a child still learning to speak. The language thus lends an authenticity to the child's perspective that Fanthorpe has chosen to write from.
Structurally, the stanzas in "Half-Past Two" are all tercets and thus rather short, reflecting perhaps the child's inability to form any coherent, sustained understanding of the situation. In the poem, time serves as a symbol for the seemingly arbitrary rules of the adult world, and the child is disoriented because he doesn't quite understand "half-past two."
In Carol Ann Duffy's "War Photographer," the speaker feels disconsolate and frustrated because people have become desensitized to and thus uninterested in the pictures he risks his life to bring home from war-zones.
Whereas the child in "Half-Past Two" is confused because he doesn't understand the adult world, the speaker in "War Photographer" is disconsolate because the adult world has become desensitized to its own horrors. Furthermore, while the language in "Half-Past Two" is childlike and playful, the language in "War Photographer" is dark, haunting, and violent. The speaker recalls "running children in a nightmare heat" and "half-formed ghost[s]." He recalls "blood stained into foreign dust" and "A hundred agonies in black and white."
Structurally, the rhyme scheme of "War Photographer" is irregular, perhaps echoing the unease of the speaker. The stanzas (each one a sestet) are longer than the stanzas in "Half-Past Two," suggesting that the agonies of the speaker are perhaps more enduring than the confusion of the child in "Half-Past Two" is.