Gap Year - Key Quotes Flashcards
“I remember your Moses basket before you were born”
Speaker is framing the time.
“Once I imagined I felt you laugh”
Synaesthesia - normally you would head a laugh but she is feeling it.
“…I’d talk to you, my close stranger,/ call you Tumshie”
Oxymoron - contradiction, he is physically close but she doesn’t know him yet.
“Now I peek in your room and stare at your bed/hardly able to imagine you”
It is as if she is still checking on him as though he were a child. Sense of longing.
“…Now you are eighteen,/ six foot two, away, away in Costa Rica, Peru, Bolivia”
The repetition represents the distance between them.
“I follow your trails on my Times Atlas”
An idea of her being an arm-chair traveller. As she gets news of him, she plots it in the map.
“You have a new haircut; your face is grainy, blurry”
Unfamiliar to the speaker. She is trying to picture his face and when she gets a blurry photo it is unsatisfying.
“Seeing you, shy, smiling, on the webcam reminds me/of the second scan at twenty weeks”
Comparison between past and present.
“And now you’re not coming home till four weeks after/your due date”
This mirrors the idea of her son being overdue at birth. This is said with longing and disappointment.
“I feel like a home-alone mother”
role reversal - children are usually the one left at home (relates to lucozade)
“…now I am/wearing your large black slippers, flip-flopping/into your empty bedroom”
Onomatopoeic sound - suggesting a lack of energy - suggestive that she keeps returning to his room
“…I stare at the photos you send…”
repeat
“You on top of the world, arms outstretched, eager”
metaphor - on top of a mountain
“My heart soars like the birds in your bright blue skies”
we have long vowel signs which represent the love which spreads over the whole world. Image of pride and joy.
“I have a son out in the big wide world”
repeat
