VH Structure Flashcards
“The hospital smell”
Effective opening grabs the reader’s attention, by referring to a very vivid and distinctive sensory image (the smell of a hospital) which the reader can relate to
“What seems a corpse is trundled into a lift and vanishes heavenward”
Enjambment is used here to emphasise the last words of the lines, carefully chosen to suggest a finality in death. “Corpse” has connotations of an absence of life and “vanishes” further stresses the narrator’s view that death is absolute (MacCaig, himself, was an atheist and didn’t believe in an afterlife). “Heavenward”, therefore, seems incongruous, although this is simply an example of the narrator trying to avoid the seriousness of the visit by creating a whimsical image
“I will not feel, I will not feel, until I have to”
Repetition is used to create the impression of the narrator chanting to himself under his breath, in order to avoid dealing with his emotions
“here and up and down and there”
Unusual syntax (word order) is another example of the narrator trying to lighten the mood, while also emphasising the number of nurses he sees. It suggests he is looking all around to find a distraction from his thoughts
“So much pain, so many deaths so many farewells”
Repetition of “so” stresses the frequency of the nurses’ unpleasant dealings, which supports the high esteem, perhaps envy, with which he regards the ability of the nurses to cope
“Ward 7”
A non-sentence is used to jolt the reader, just as the narrator is jolted by his arrival at the ward where the patient lies. Caesura is also used to further emphasise the significance of the narrator’s arrival at the ward. This is the turning point of the poem, as the narrator has now reached the patient and must now face his emotions
“A withered hand trembles on its stalk”
Pronoun “it” is used to show the humanity of the woman has been diminished, suggesting the narrator doesn’t feel she is truly alive anymore. Her body is merely an empty shell, while she is effectively dead
“Books that will not be read and fruitless fruits”
Enjambment causes the last line to seem like a bitter addendum, which summarises the narrator’s despair at the hopelessness of his situation, and the isolation both he and his patient have suffered
