Out of the Bag Flashcards
What are the main themes?
Voice, myth/folklore, healing, medicine and gender
What is featured in part 1?
Child’s voice - narrator is remembering doctor who delivers babies to his house
What can be inferred through ‘All of us came in Doctor Kerlin’s bag.’?
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
How is Dr Kerlin presented in ‘he’d reappear to wash’?
He is omnipresent - almost God like figure compared to an ‘ark’ in stanza 5, who similarly preserves life
What can be inferred through ‘Those nosy, rosy, big soft hands’?
Simplicity of this view reiterated by the nursery rhyme description
What device is used in ‘like a hypnotist/ Unwinding us, he’d wind the instruments’?
Simile - presents him as mythical/magical to the ignorant child
What device is used ‘Darken the door’?
Plosives - reflective of childhood fear of man who puts babies together, giving doctor a degree of power
What can be inferred through ‘fur-lined leather collar’ and ‘waistcoat satin’?
Luxurious materials present Kerlin as a figure from a wealthier, more middle-class world - child looks at him in awe/wonderment
What can be inferred through ‘Hyperborean’?
Mythological power - in Greek mythology there were people who lived a perfect existence so Dr Kerlin is defied/untainted
What device is used in ‘swabbed porcelain’ ‘chill of tiles’ ‘chrome surgery tools’?
Semantic field conveying a clinical, unsettling, ominous setting
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’?
Asyndetic listing showing the complexity of his role. Ironic because he hasn’t toiled through labour, the mother has and she isn’t created
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’?
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
What occurs in part 2?
Shift to Ancient Greece, narrator is now an adult, explores links between poetry, religion and healing as well as ancient and modern worlds
What can be inferred through ‘Poeta doctus Peter Levi’?
Archaeologist, poet and teacher and laminated meaning learned poet
What can be inferred through the reference to ‘Peter Levi’ ‘Asclepius’ and ‘Graves’ ?
References to different people and worlds present a shift in voice to a perspective of a more knowledgeable, adult figure
What are the two meanings of ‘A site of incubation’?
- process which frail, immature living things are kept warm to survive and grow
- 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
What device is used in ‘When epiphany occurred and you met the god…’?
Ellipsis marks a shift in time as speaker remembers a time where, experiencing the same heat and intensity, he nearly fainted
What is a ‘thurifer’?
A person who assists a priest by carrying a form of incense
What can be inferred through ‘Again I nearly fainted’?
Speaker connects the two events in Greece and France - blurring of past and present, hallucination, modern and ancient
What can be inferred through ‘finger dot-faced men/ With button-spots in a straight line down their fronts’?
Hallucination sees reintroduction of enigmatic Dr Kerlin - bizarre as the childish imagery contrasts with Latinate
What can be inferred through ‘miraculum’?
Suggests that childhood wonder is always there however it’s articulated in different ways as we learn to repress/translate it for adult world
What is part 3 about?
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
What is part 4 about?
Speaker looking back at birth of sibling - recognising mothers role
What device is used in ‘The room I came from and the rest of us all came from’?
Repetition of ‘care’ to emphasise he no longer believes he came from the bag. Structural parallel as language mirrors stanza one
What device is used in ‘again and again’?
Repetition of words and instances of rhyme/half rhyme brings a tone of resolution and coming together
What can be inferred through ‘whisper of triumph’?
Mother’s exhaustion when creating life - progression of understanding
What device occurs in the final lines?
Direct speech as the mother controls the truth and the dramatic climax occurs as woman has a triumph
