Middle School Poetry Analysis: “The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late”

Poetry analysis can be intimidating, but when students learn how to do it by reading fun and memorable poetry—especially the kind that tells a story—it becomes much less of a challenge.

“The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late” (the ridiculous song Frodo sings in the common room of the Prancing Pony Inn in The Fellowship of the Ring) is just that sort of poem. This wild comedy of errors expands on the nonsense of the classic nursery rhyme “Hey Diddle Diddle.” How can a cow jump over the moon? Why did the dish run away with the spoon? What do these things have to do with each other, anyway?

In this 1-time class, we’ll learn how to do a close reading by spending time with this poem, exploring why the writer uses the words, images, and sounds that he does. The most important topic in this class is sound devices, like rhyme scheme, alliteration, and onomatopoeia. These are what give the poem its songlike quality and recall the nursery rhyme it pretends to give background for.

We’ll also get to know each other a bit. Like I do in my other literature classes, I’ll use a combination of lecture and discussion, using slides to display sections of text for analysis as a class.

No prior experience with poetry analysis, Tolkien’s writing, or the nursery rhyme “Hey Diddle Diddle” is necessary, but students need to read “The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late” before coming to class, and it will also be helpful for them to have their copies of it on hand while we discuss.

Keywords: literature; English; The Hobbit; The Lord of the Rings; fantasy; meet the teacher; high school; junior high school; middle school; teen; preteen