Analysis of Visiting Hour by Norman Maccaig The poem "Visiting Hour" by Norman Maccaig is a very emotional one. The poet helps you to understand the situation and his feelings by the use imagery and word choice. "Visiting Hour" is written in the first person as the poet himself is going to hospital to visit a very close relative who is severiorly unwell and is dying. The poet is having an emotional effect as he is having different thoughts as the poem progresses. I think that the poet is trying to contain his feelings by not expressing them freely. The opening stanza begins with the metaphor "The hospital smell combs my nostrils." This suggests that the poet is sensing that there is a strong, disinfectant smell. The metaphor is unusual but very effective. It almost suggests the poet is feeling a bit of pain and sets the mood for the rest of the poem. The setting is partly described with the phrase "green and yellow corridors." The colours are usually associated with hospitals which makes his word choice more effective. The beginning of the second stanza also helps you to understand the poets situation and his feelings. "What seems a corpse is trundled into a lift and vanishes heavenward." The description describes a body descending further and further away until it aboard the lift. It suggests that the poet is thinking about the possibility of death and thinking about life after death. I think that the poet has opted for the word "heavenward" as it states that the poet is looking at life after death. The metaphor "I will not feel, until I have to" begins the third stanza. This suggests that the poet is trying not to fe... ... middle of paper ... ...s stanza effectively convey the idea of the patient being in a critical state. The final stanza begins with the effective metaphor "She smiles a little at this black figure in a white cave." It suggests that the poet is feeling the odd one out. The poets situation is not helped when he "clumsily rise in the round swimming waves of a bell." My personal reaction would be that he would still be feeling empty inside. The poet ends the poem by phrasing "leaving behind only books that will not be read and fruitless fruits." This suggest that the time for the patient has come and she is about to die. Norman Maccaig has portrait himself in an emotional manner while on his way to the hospital to visit a close relative. The use of imagery and word choice has helped the reader to understand his situation and his feelings.
His outside actions of touching the wall and looking at all the names are causing him to react internally. He is remembering the past and is attempting to suppress the emotions that are rising within him. The first two lines of the poem set the mood of fear and gloom which is constant throughout the remainder of the poem. The word choice of "black" to describe the speaker's face can convey several messages (502). The most obvious meaning ... ...
The vignette, Visiting Hours written by Judy Budnitz, is comprised of a binary inversion and an embedded allegory which is used to reveal the masked relationships within the family. In the narrative, the sibling duo evolves as the story progresses, eventually craving what the other sibling wanted in the first place. Thus, this results in a juxtaposition between the two subjects of desire.
Dealing with mental illness is difficult, but even worse when caring for a family member with a mental illness, creating the feeling of a lifetime of servitude. Bebe Moore Campbell uses flashback of slavery throughout the novel, 72 Hour Hold to explain how taking care of a family member with a mental illness can make one feel enslaved. Flashbacks throughout the novel are used to describe a mother’s, Keri, struggle of taking care of her bipolar daughter, Trina, while also insinuating that she feels her daughter’s illness has enslaved her. With the usage of slavery flashbacks author Bebe Moore Campbell creates a new reality, in which mental illness does not only affect the person suffering but also the people around them. The purpose of these flashbacks are not to just describe a minority, but to highlight the impact mental illness brings to the individual as well as the now indebted caretakers.
Overall, dwell on this process of changing throughout the poem, it can be understood that the poet is demonstrating a particular attitude towards life. Everyone declines and dies eventually, but it would be better to embrace an optimistic, opened mind than a pessimistic, giving-up attitude; face the approach of death unflinchingly, calmly.
Set in Nazi German, with the occasional interruption from the 1980’s Reagan Era, A Bright Room Called Day by Tony Kushner has more in common with 2016 America than one may first imagine. Political upheaval in the wake of a devastating economic crisis and the rise of an influential and charismatic leader certainly may resonate with many in America today, even as this may not have been what the play write had imagined having written this play in the 1980’s. The story follows the events of the 1930’s as Hitler gains ground in Germany, and a small, odd group of friends who work to do their part politically. While some succeed more than others at finding a voice among the chaos, others are left behind in the wake of the war.
Harper begins the poem by detailing the start of the speaker’s relationship with a man, developing it through the use of metaphor and concrete diction. From the first few lines of the poem, the reader learns that the relationship was destined to be futile through Harper’s use of metaphor: “If when standing all alone/ I cried for bread a careless world/ pressed
Therefore, Oliver’s incorporation of imagery, setting, and mood to control the perspective of her own poem, as well as to further build the contrast she establishes through the speaker, serves a critical role in creating the lesson of the work. Oliver’s poem essentially gives the poet an ultimatum; either he can go to the “cave behind all that / jubilation” (10-11) produced by a waterfall to “drip with despair” (14) without disturbing the world with his misery, or, instead, he can mimic the thrush who sings its poetry from a “green branch” (15) on which the “passing foil of the water” (16) gently brushes its feathers. The contrast between these two images is quite pronounced, and the intention of such description is to persuade the audience by setting their mood towards the two poets to match that of the speaker. The most apparent difference between these two depictions is the gracelessness of the first versus the gracefulness of the second. Within the poem’s content, the setting has been skillfully intertwined with both imagery and mood to create an understanding of the two poets, whose surroundings characterize them. The poet stands alone in a cave “to cry aloud for [his] / mistakes” while the thrush shares its beautiful and lovely music with the world (1-2). As such, the overall function of these three elements within the poem is to portray the
In Kate Chopin's short story "The Story of an Hour," there is much irony. The first irony detected is in the way that Louise reacts to the news of the death of her husband, Brently Mallard. Before Louise's reaction is revealed, Chopin alludes to how the widow feels by describing the world according to her perception of it after the "horrible" news.
...ttachment or emotion. Again, Heaney repeats the use of a discourse marker, to highlight how vividly he remembers the terrible time “Next morning, I went up into the room”. In contrast to the rest of the poem, Heaney finally writes more personally, beginning with the personal pronoun “I”. He describes his memory with an atmosphere that is soft and peaceful “Snowdrops and Candles soothed the bedside” as opposed to the harsh and angry adjectives previously used such as “stanched” and “crying”. With this, Heaney is becoming more and more intimate with his time alone with his brother’s body, and can finally get peace of mind about the death, but still finding the inevitable sadness one feels with the loss of a loved one “A four foot box, a foot for every year”, indirectly telling the reader how young his brother was, and describing that how unfortunate the death was.
One must look at this poem and imagine what is like to live thru this experience of becoming so tired of expecting to die everyday on the battlefield, that one starts to welcome it in order to escape the anticipation. The effects of living day in and day out in such a manner creates a person who either has lost the fear of death or has become so frighten of how they once lived the compensate for it later by living a guarded life. The one who loses the fear for death ends up with this way of living in which they only feel alive when faced with death. The person in this poem is one who has lost their fear of death, and now thrives off coming close to it he expresses it when he states “Here is the adrenaline rush you crave, that inexorable flight, that insane puncture” (LL.6-7). What happens to this persona when he leaves the battlefield? He pushes the limit trying to come close to death to feel alive; until they push
It is something for the soul to reside in until it has fulfilled its purpose on earth. Then it leaves, to start a new life in another shipping crate. With a clean conscious each of the characters in these poems are able to die guilt-free and both believe they will ascend to heaven. They acknowledge the fact that their souls will carry on after their bodies have died and seem to rest assure in the fact that there is more to life than the experiences they had on earth. Similar to the way souls are regarded by today's standards, it is something that departs from person upon death and carries the memory of an individual forever.
The school board plans to add one and a half hours to school each day. I disagree with this decision because it’s cutting into dinner time with families , our little siblings need help getting into the house, and it will cut our sleep time down for school in the morning .
Although marriage is considered a lifelong bond in “The Story of an Hour, Kate Chopin uses the open window to symbolize Louise’s new life to come. Throughout her life she secretly lived a mournful life. Louise had been fooled by her marriage life. In fact, only minutes after Josephine tells her about Brentley’s tragic death she reconsiders her previous feelings. Louise reconsidered her speculation of their marriage life and had second thoughts on how she felt about Brently, “And yet she loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, unsolved mystery, count for in the face of possession of self-assertion, which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of being her” (Chopin 2). Regardless of the fact that
The speaker started the poem by desiring the privilege of death through the use of similes, metaphors, and several other forms of language. As the events progress, the speaker gradually changes their mind because of the many complications that death evokes. The speaker is discontent because of human nature; the searching for something better, although there is none. The use of language throughout this poem emphasized these emotions, and allowed the reader the opportunity to understand what the speaker felt.
...er already confused and chaotic mind, her thought process leads her to thinking about death and hopelessness of being healed. Hopkins’s poem starts out differently, with him thinking that there was nothing that could be worse than what he was going through, but in the process of searching for relief, he discovers there is no relief with death. His poem comes to the same conclusion as Dickinson’s, the hopelessness of having no cure to save them. The ending to Dickinson’s second poem is similar to this that after her descent into insanity, there is no hope for her of ever going back to reality. In these three poems, imagery plays a large part with helping the author describe their thoughts and situations, which increases the feeling the reader has because it seems more lifelike. The three poems begin at various places, but end with the revolving theme of hopelessness.