Visiting Hour

Question 1

Hospital smell

Answer 1

word choice
recognisable place for all evocative smell

Question 2

combs my nostrils

Answer 2

metaphor
emphasises the strength of the smell it is overpowering and unpleasant

Question 3

bobbing

Answer 3

word choice
emphasises the joviality of the nurses movement which contrasts the hospitals setting

Question 4

green and yellow

Answer 4

word choice
the colours are associated with illness and sickness

Question 5

corpse

Answer 5

word choice
suggests how death confronts him in the hospital

Question 6

vanishes

Answer 6

word choice
suggests the sudden unpredictability of death

Question 7

heavenward

Answer 7

word choice
sense of hope that the soul may go to heaven after death

Question 8

I will not feel, I will not feel

Answer 8

repetition
emphasises how he wishes to ignore his emotions and stay numb to his emotions of grief and pain for his friend

Question 9

I have to

Answer 9

word choice
and separation onto new line emphasises how he realises that at some point he must allow himself to feel grief

Question 10

lightly, swiftly

Answer 10

word choice
sense of movement, they are accomplished in their duties
connotations of being care free which contrasts hospital

Question 11

here and up and down and there

Answer 11

word choice
omnipresence in hospital that the nurses are always busy which contrasts patients

Question 12

miraculously

Answer 12

word choice
suggests his admiration for the nurses

Question 13

carrying their burden

Answer 13

metaphor
suggests his admiration for the nurses as they look after very unwell people and are constantly working in the face of death

Question 14

so much pain, so many deaths

Answer 14

repetition
emphasises how suffering is their daily life

Question 15

still clear after so many farewells

Answer 15

word choice
they contrast his emotional instability
he is in awe of them despite the terrible suffering they will have seen they are still capable of going on

Question 16

Ward 7

Answer 16

minor sentence
provides break in the poem reflecting his sudden arrival

Question 17

white cave of forgetfulness

Answer 17

metaphor
expresses the isolation she exists in due to her illness. She has no sensory awareness

Question 18

withered

Answer 18

word choice
association with death and the extremes of illness. close to death

Question 19

trembles on it’s stalk

Answer 19

metaphor
suggests how close she is to death, sense of fragility she is well passed her vitality

Question 20

too heavy to raise

Answer 20

word choice
suggests how exhausting her illness is

Question 21

wasted of colour

Answer 21

word choice
connotations of lack of life and close to death

Question 22

glass fang is fixed

Answer 22

personification
IV has vampiric connotations emphasising the horror of her illness, as even though she has been given a lot of medicine it isn’t working

Question 23

distance shrinks until distance between pain

Answer 23

metaphor
emphasises the pain and division illness has causes it prevents communication

Question 24

neither she nor I can cross

Answer 24

word choice
emphasises both of their isolation hers in pain and his in grief

Question 25

smiles a little

Answer 25

word choice suggests she is partially aware, sense of real sadness

Question 26

black figure in her white cave

Answer 26

metaphor the contrast in colours emphasises the fact that they are both on different planes of existence she is near death and he is very much alive

Question 27

clumisly

Answer 27

word choice suggests that his emotions have affected him physically

Question 28

round swimming waves of a bell

Answer 28

word choice synesthesia experiences the sounds as a feeling he is dizzy with emotion

Question 29

fainter

Answer 29

word choice suggests she is fading from the world

Question 30

books that will not be read and fruitless fruits

Answer 30

word choice tone of hopelessness, emphasising the futility of these gifts as she is passing away. Painful image to end the poem on