Sentence Structure - Hotel Room 12th Floor

Question 1

I lie in bed, between a radio and a television set, and hear

Answer 1

• parenthesis is used to add extra information about the technology in the hotel room.
• This emphasises the noise out on the street that MacCaig is trying to block out with this technology but cannot.

Question 2

Broken bones, the harsh screaming

Answer 2

• synecdoche
• gives only the parts of an injured human, reducing them to body parts and dehumanises them
• This suggests the level of violence is such that the emergency services can only deal with the physical aspects of violent crime and not the damage to the city’s population.

Question 3

The frontier is never/ somewhere else

Answer 3

• enjambment
• emphasises the word choice of “never”
• which is a negative view of any possibility
• This makes it clear that there is no escape from violence or the darkness within the city and also within human nature