out of the bag - seamus heaney Flashcards
‘all of us came in doctor kerlin’s bag’
where the baby comes from in the child’s head
imagination children have
‘disappear… reappear’
magic process
‘nosy, rosy, big, soft hands’
internal rhyme
powerful - god like
comforting
’ the colour of a spaniel’s inside lug’
childlike - only colour it can compare to
‘wind the instruments’
mirrors becoming hypnotised
‘darken the door and leave’
metaphorically big figure
position of power
‘stooping up to the room again, a whiff of disinfectant’
authority
temporal deixis - getting older - losing imagination
sensory langauge
‘waistcoat satin and highlights on the forceps’
semantic field of medicine
clinical language
‘all thanks denied’
so powerful
nothing fazes him
‘milk and ice, swabbed porcelain’
purity
euphonic language
‘infant parts strung neatly from a line up near the ceiling - a toe, a foot, a shin, an arm, a cock’
how the child thinks babies are made now
thinks he knows the secret
‘poeta doctus peter levi says sanctuaries of asclepius’
flashforward to adulthood
tries to be like the doctor but a doctor of poetry instead
god of medicine - uses greek mythology to reach the level of the doctor. not possible - in his imagination
‘a site of incubation, where ‘incubation’ was technical and ritual’
have an epiphany in greek mythology
spiritual and medical process
‘thurifer’
trying to reach the power of the doctor
‘hallucinated doctor kerlin at the steamed up glass’
childhood experiences impact adulthood
‘a set of droopy sausage arms and legs’
child’s prespective
‘hygienic hands’
shows imagination leaving
‘undarkening door’
contrasts doctor
not as powerful
‘usual and useful at births and deaths’
powerful doctor
present at seminal points in life
‘incubating for real’
epiphany
mother is the magician
structure
4 sections - shows journey to realisation
cyclical structure - impact of childhood on adulthood
headlines
male dominated roles often express power
the innocence of childhood is unattainable in adulthood
we will always be nostalgic for the purity of childhood experiences
the spiritual cannot always compete with the effectiveness of the medical
the simplistic perspective of life in childhood
the inevitable return in adulthood to childhood experiences
women often downplay their hardships to protect the innocence of their offspring
the fallacy of trying to emulate our childhood heroes
the power of imagination in childhood
