Visiting Hour Flashcards
“The hospital smell combs my nostrils”
‘hospital smell’ - something we all recognise and are familiar with. Sets the scene straight away.
‘combs my nostrils’ - emphasises how strong the smell is. Syndecoche - using a part to describe a whole. Here the nostrils emphasises the strength of the smell.
“as they go bobbing along green and yellow corridors.”
‘bobbing’ - word choice: bobbing is quite a jolly word. He is trying to distance himself from the pain he is about to feel.
‘green and yellow’ - colours of sickness
“What seems to be a corpse is trundled into a lift and vanished heavenward.”
‘corpse’ - associated with death. This tells us he is visiting someone who is dying.
‘heavenward’ - reference to the afterlife. As an atheist, this might suggest that the person he is visiting is someone he loves. Perhaps he is hopeful that there is somewhere better for her to go.
“I will not feel, I will not feel, until I have to”
repetition - like a mantra. He is trying to avoid the pain of his wife’s death. Enjambment places the word ‘feel’ on a new line to suggest the strength of the emotions he is trying not to experience. It emphasises the ‘not’ also.
‘have to’ - shows that this is not something he can avoid forever.
“Nurses walk lightly, swiftly, here and up and down and there,”
They are busy
“their slender waists miraculously carrying their burden of so much pain, so many deaths, their eyes still clear after so many farewells”
‘slender waists’ - attractive
Word choice of ‘miraculously’ shows how much he admires what the nurses do. He’s jealous of how well they cope with all the death they regularly see. They are detached, but he cannot be because he loves his wife. Repetition of ‘so much’ emphasises this.
“Ward 7.”
Short sentence. Abrupt arrival at his wife’s ward. He will have to deal with everything he has been avoiding now.
“She lies in a white cave of forgetfulness.”
‘white cave’ - imagery. It’s literally her curtained off area in the hospital, but it looks like a cave.
‘forgetfulness’ - has many meanings. It refers to her own forgetfulness because of the drugs she’s on/her illness. It also suggests that the people who used to know her are starting to forget about her. They stopped visiting because it’s difficult. The white room is also lacking in visual or mental simulation. It is boring and doesn’t promote thinking/remembering.
“A withered hand trembles on its stalk.!
Metaphor - reference to flower tells us this is someone he loves/suggests she was once beautiful. ‘withered’ suggests she’s wasting away.
“Eyes move behind eyelids too heavy to raise. Into an arm wasted of colour a glass fang is fixed but not guzzling”
‘eyelids too heavy’ - sleepy/dopey from drugs
Vampires/gothic imagery. This is a literal reference to the drip which is probably keeping her alive. Alliteration/onomatopoeia.
“And between her and me distance shrinks till there is nothing left but the distance of pain that neither she nor I can cross”
‘distance shrinks’ - walking towards her.
Metaphor - he can no longer connect to his wife because of her pain/the drugs. There is a barrier between them emotionally.
“She smiles a little at this black figure in her white cave”
Metaphor - ‘black figure’ = death. She smiles at death because she would be happy to die now. There isn’t much left of her life because she is so disconnected from everything.
“who clumsily rises in the round swimming waves of a bell”
‘waves of a bell’ - signals the end of visiting hour
synaesthesia - when one of the senses is represented/stimulated by another. ‘swimming waves’ is visual, but he is describing a sound. This may relate to tears in his eyes, or the experience of her drug-addicted mind - seeing the sound as well as hearing it.
“and dizzily goes off, growing fainter, not smaller,”
‘dizzily’ - he is dizzy from emotion; she is dizzy from drugs.
‘growing fainter’ - he grows fainter as he walks further away. She grows fainter as she gets closer to death.
‘not smaller’ - she stays large in his mind. He still thinks of her, misses her, loves her. She’s still important.
“leaving behind only books that will not be read and fruitless fruits.”
Oxymoron - opposites together. ‘fruit’ refers to the gift people always bring to hospitals. The fruit will never be eaten. ‘Fruitless’ means pointless, unsuccessful. She will never get better. He is pondering the point in keeping people alive with machines and drugs when it achieves nothing. Also, he may be pondering the point of life/love in general.
