Visiting Hour Flashcards
“hospital smell”
The word choice helps us associate this smell as it’s something we’re all familiar with.
“Combs my nostrils”
Metaphor suggests the smell is overpowering and somewhat painful.
“Green and yellow”
Word choice suggests illness stressing the poets discomfort.
“Corpse is trundled into a lift and vanishes heavenwards.”
Word choice suggests connotations of death. Which is what the poets beginning to think about
“I will not feel I will not feel”
Repetition shows the poets inner turmoil, trying to convince themselves that this is true.
“Here and up and down and there”
Syntax inversion shifts the focus on how many nurses there are running all over the place.
“Slender waists miraculously carrying their burden”
Word choice shows they admire the nurses for being so strong when they’re struggling to contain themselves on this one occasion.
“Of so much, so many deaths”
Repetition emphasise just how many times they’ve had to deal with these unpleasant situations.
“Ward 7.”
Minor sentence draw attention to this turning point. They’ve reached their destination.
“White cave of forgetfulness .”
Metaphor suggests that the white curtains of the bed are cave like and that the patient is isolated.
“A withered hand trembles on its stalk.”
Metaphor suggests that the patient is fragile and brittle as it’s compared to a dying flower.
“Wasted of colour a glass fang is fixed, not guzzling but giving.”
Metaphor refers to the drip as vampire like the horror element emphasises the poets grief.
“Distance of pain that neither she nor I can cross.”
Enjambement is used to visualise this gap between the poet and the poet and the patient with the line spacing.
“Black figure in her with white cave”
Metaphor again continues this idea of distance between the two as well as back symbolising death.
“Clumsily rises in the round swimming waves of bell”
Word choice - bell shows end of the visiting hour and clumsily showing the poets inner turmoil.
