Out of the Bag

Question 1

What are the main themes?

Answer 1

Voice, myth/folklore, healing, medicine and gender

Question 2

What is featured in part 1?

Answer 2

Child’s voice - narrator is remembering doctor who delivers babies to his house

Question 3

What can be inferred through ‘All of us came in Doctor Kerlin’s bag.’?

Answer 3

Child’s perspective, naively thinks babies come out of the bag - introducing childish fables. End stop to emphasise undoubtable fact the speaker feels they were brought into the world by this man

Question 4

How is Dr Kerlin presented in ‘he’d reappear to wash’?

Answer 4

He is omnipresent - almost God like figure compared to an ‘ark’ in stanza 5, who similarly preserves life

Question 5

What can be inferred through ‘Those nosy, rosy, big soft hands’?

Answer 5

Simplicity of this view reiterated by the nursery rhyme description

Question 6

What device is used in ‘like a hypnotist/ Unwinding us, he’d wind the instruments’?

Answer 6

Simile - presents him as mythical/magical to the ignorant child

Question 7

What device is used ‘Darken the door’?

Answer 7

Plosives - reflective of childhood fear of man who puts babies together, giving doctor a degree of power

Question 8

What can be inferred through ‘fur-lined leather collar’ and ‘waistcoat satin’?

Answer 8

Luxurious materials present Kerlin as a figure from a wealthier, more middle-class world - child looks at him in awe/wonderment

Question 9

What can be inferred through ‘Hyperborean’?

Answer 9

Mythological power - in Greek mythology there were people who lived a perfect existence so Dr Kerlin is defied/untainted

Question 10

What device is used in ‘swabbed porcelain’ ‘chill of tiles’ ‘chrome surgery tools’?

Answer 10

Semantic field conveying a clinical, unsettling, ominous setting

Question 11

What is one device used in ‘infant parts/ Strung neatly from a line up near the ceiling - / A toe, a foot and shin, an arm, a cock’?

Answer 11

Asyndetic listing showing the complexity of his role. Ironic because he hasn’t toiled through labour, the mother has and she isn’t created

Question 12

What is the other device used in ‘‘infant parts/ Strung neatly from a line up near the ceiling - / A toe, a foot and shin, an arm, a cock’?

Answer 12

Graphic and disturbing imagery presents the creation of new life in a more brutal, pragmatic way - sinister representation as he grows up, he moves away from childish admiration to being more wary

Question 13

What occurs in part 2?

Answer 13

Shift to Ancient Greece, narrator is now an adult, explores links between poetry, religion and healing as well as ancient and modern worlds

Question 14

What can be inferred through ‘Poeta doctus Peter Levi’?

Answer 14

Archaeologist, poet and teacher and laminated meaning learned poet

Question 15

What can be inferred through the reference to ‘Peter Levi’ ‘Asclepius’ and ‘Graves’ ?

Answer 15

References to different people and worlds present a shift in voice to a perspective of a more knowledgeable, adult figure

Question 16

What are the two meanings of ‘A site of incubation’?

Answer 16

1. process which frail, immature living things are kept warm to survive and grow
2. refers to an ancient ritual where people during sleep believed they were visited by Asclepius to guide them to health
   Speaker exploring ways we understand health and life

Question 17

What device is used in ‘When epiphany occurred and you met the god…’?

Answer 17

Ellipsis marks a shift in time as speaker remembers a time where, experiencing the same heat and intensity, he nearly fainted

Question 18

What is a ‘thurifer’?

Answer 18

A person who assists a priest by carrying a form of incense

Question 19

What can be inferred through ‘Again I nearly fainted’?

Answer 19

Speaker connects the two events in Greece and France - blurring of past and present, hallucination, modern and ancient

Question 20

What can be inferred through ‘finger dot-faced men/ With button-spots in a straight line down their fronts’?

Answer 20

Hallucination sees reintroduction of enigmatic Dr Kerlin - bizarre as the childish imagery contrasts with Latinate

Question 21

What can be inferred through ‘miraculum’?

Answer 21

Suggests that childhood wonder is always there however it’s articulated in different ways as we learn to repress/translate it for adult world

Question 22

What is part 3 about?

Answer 22

Still loosely in Epidaurus, pulls together elements that have preceded - sends holy ground to a friend, despite passage of time he still returns to myths

Question 23

What is part 4 about?

Answer 23

Speaker looking back at birth of sibling - recognising mothers role

Question 24

What device is used in ‘The room I came from and the rest of us all came from’?

Answer 24

Repetition of ‘care’ to emphasise he no longer believes he came from the bag. Structural parallel as language mirrors stanza one

Question 25

What device is used in ‘again and again’?

Answer 25

Repetition of words and instances of rhyme/half rhyme brings a tone of resolution and coming together

Question 26

What can be inferred through ‘whisper of triumph’?

Answer 26

Mother’s exhaustion when creating life - progression of understanding

Question 27

What device occurs in the final lines?

Answer 27

Direct speech as the mother controls the truth and the dramatic climax occurs as woman has a triumph