My Grandmas Houses - Key Quotes Flashcards
“Her bedroom is my favourite”
repeat
“She is on the second floor of a tenement / From her front room window you see the cemetery
similar vowel sounds, no rhyme but suggests there is a link. For someone of that class these may be two destinations in life.
“At night i climb / over all the newspaper parcels to get to bed”
Highlights how many items there are and how small the child is.
“What does she want with anything modern, / a shiny new pin?”
metaphor - the grandmother doesn’t want change she is happy as she is.
“The sideboard solid as a coffin”
Similie - There is something secure and solid about this. The ‘coffin’ also foreshadows the passing of time and approaching death.
“The new house is called a high rise”
The explanation of this suggest that the writer finds this strange and new and maybe even exotic.
“She makes endless pots of vegetable soup”
The grandmother is making lots of comforting food to try and settle herself in. She feels disrupted.
The grandmother is being resourceful because she doesn’t have a lot of money and soup uses raw ingredients.
“finally she gets to like the hot running water”
Grandmother begins to accept the aspects of a more modern and comfortable life.
“My parents do not believe. It is down to her”
Her grandmother is the only one teaching her religion. Shows how generations are moving away from traditions.
“until the next time God grabs me in Glasgow with Gran”
metaphors - in the childs mind god and gran go together.
She only goes to church when she has to go with her grandmother.
“even at 70 she cleans people houses / for ten bob”
shows grandmothers work ethic and she may need the money too, if she is poor.
“Rooms lead off like an octopus’s arms”
similie - long winding corridors, big house.
“The posh one”
repeat
“I see her / like the hunchback of Notre Dame”
similie - the grandmother is getting old and is tired from her work. The hunchback was an outside on society and the child is realising how the grandmother is still on the outside of modern society looking in.
“Sit up straight”
This is traditional things the older generation have grown up to and pass on. The grandmother doesn’t want the kid to be lazy. It is the grandmothers standards. There is a clear difference between the two generations.
