Visiting hour Flashcards
“The hospital smell combs my nostrils”
Word choice “hospital smell” it’s a smell everyone is familiar with
“Go bobbing along the green and yellow corridors”
Word choice- colours have connotations of sickness which stresses the poets discomfort in the poem
“Heavenward”
Word choice- connotations of death, the poet has begun to think about death as he walks through the corridors
“Here and up and down and there”
Structure- emphasises the number of nurses he sees and how busy they are
“So much pain so many deaths”
Repetition of “so” emphasises the amount of deaths the nurses deal with
“Ward 7.”
Caesura- makes the readers stop and realise he’s reached the Ward where his friend is and that he has stopped and is apprehensive.
Turning point in the poem
“White cave of forgetfulness”
Metaphor- suggests the white curtains are like a cave, shows the isolation of the patient
“A withered hand trembles on its stalk”
Metaphor- suggests the woman’s body is brittle and weak, comparing it to a dying flower.
Word choice “withered” “trembled” suggests she’s close to death
“A glass fang is fixed. Not guzzling but giving”
Metaphor- suggests the IV drip is vampire like, the poet feels this is horror like.
Alliteration of G
“Distance of pain that neither she nor I can cross”
Enjambment- poet uses gal between lines to emphasise the distance between him and the patient
“books that will not be read and fruitless fruits”
Suggests she’s too weak to read the books- lack of life
The paradox highlights how desperate and hopeless the speakers situation is and ends on a sad note of despair
