'The Choosing' and 'In Mrs Tilscher's Class' are both poems that revolve around the theme of growing up. Carol Ann Duffy and Liz Lochhead both present growing up in thoughtful ways, the speakers in these two poems seem neither upset nor elated about growing up. The speakers were in the same situation in that they seemed to have no power over their own lives; the speaker of "The Choosing" did not make the decision to become an academic, Mary did not have the choice to be a scholar, unlike her "best friend", because when Mary grew up, she is became a traditional woman, who was entirely dependent on her man. The speaker of Duffy's poem "In Mrs. Tilscher's Classroom" did not have a choice whether she wanted to grow up or not. So it was inevitable that it would grow, because everything in nature grows and develops or dies. The choices both begin in a very ordinary situation, however, these friends unconsciously made their own decisions during school and oblivious to the choices made for them by their families, and they split up and traveled in opposite directions. Both girls were equally intelligent, only Mary excelled at mathematics more than the main speaker, their paths cross ten years later, except that their lives were completely different, and the question "what is the better life? is noted. When this poem was written, children would have accepted that their parents made decisions for them, although today it would seem unfair and unkind for your parents to dictate to you what you should and should not do. “In Mrs. Tilscher’s Classroom” tells the story of a journey. through elementary school, the speaker of the poem views school as a safe and secure environment for adventure and discovery. This poem has...... middle of paper ...... say this because Mary's father "stands in strange contrast to the elegant greyhounds at his side", greyhounds may appear elegant, nevertheless, watching the races of Greyhounds were a hobby for people in the working classes at the time this poem was written. The theme of social class is integrated into the poem because even at the end, the speaker is richer than Mary since the speaker wins prizes and is most likely a student at a university, which one has to pay for; however, Mary is dependent on her husband and does not earn money herself, "her arms round the full vessel of form that is her body" meaning that she is pregnant, and the contrasting image of the speaker with his “arms full of books”. , the repetition of “full of” highlights the importance of the contrasting lives that the two girls lead, even if they were as equal and ordinary as each other..