Top-Rated Free Essay
Preview

"Visiting Hour" by Norman Maccaig

Good Essays
497 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
"Visiting Hour" by Norman Maccaig
Rewrite - "Visiting Hour"

The poem "Visiting Hour" was written by the Scottish poet Norman MacCaig. In the poem, MacCaig shows the central idea is loss and death. This central idea is achieved through the use of various techniques such as imagery, structure and narrative stance. The poem is about a visit MacCain makes to a dying relative in a hospital. Throughout the poem, MacCaig gives his thoughts and feeling to how he fails to cope with the situation. The poet also uses enjambment, metaphor and imagery at the beginning of the poem when MacCaig hints at the central idea. "Vanishes heavenward", with the use of enjambment the poet introduces the idea of death. The quotation emphases the theme of death and how MacCaig may not be able to speak to his loved one again. With the use of a metaphor and imagery, as the lift physically rises up, the mood of depression associates the journey to heaven. The "corpse" represents death. The person he is visiting could easily be a corpse. The poet is occupied of images of death and sees the patient in a negative way. Though not mentioning the word death, his mind automatically makes this assumption. At this point the reader just assumes the central idea is death. Repetition is used as the poet emphasises the central concern of his loved one but also of his admiration of the nurses. "So many deaths…. so many farewells" emphasises how "miraculous" the nurses seem to him and they are not overwhelmed by the emotion of grief unlike him. MacCaig uses structure as he first mentions the patient, "Ward 7. She lies". The four word line immediately links the woman with the hospital. The non-sentence "Ward 7" draws attention to the reality of the situation the poet is in. "In a white cave of forgetfulness", though suggesting a white curtain around the bed, it creates the impression of emptiness. The vivid colours of "green and yellow" are not present. This suggests the patient's life slipping away and a fear from MacCaig that they will not remember him. A Metaphor is used once again as the poet recognises that while he can physically touch the patient, she is dying and he is alive. "And between her and me distance shrinks till there is none left but the distance of pain that neither she nor I can cross", he has entered the hospital, found her ward and reached her bedside but cannot "touch" her. The central idea is made clear to the reader in the last stanza where the poet writes, "books the will not be read". MacCaig notices the uselessness of the gifts brought for the patient. The patient's inability to eat the fruit or read the books reveals their lack of life. In conclusion, the poet achieves the central idea of death and loss by the use of metaphor, imagery, enjambment and structure. By using all of those techniques made the central idea is clear.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Who Goes with Fergus

    • 11443 Words
    • 46 Pages

    This short poem is full of mystery and complexity. It was James Joyce's favorite poem, and figures in his famous novel Ulysses, where Stephen Daedalus sings it to his dying mother.…

    • 11443 Words
    • 46 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Destroying avalon answers

    • 682 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The use of repetition brings a sad realization of how horrible this act was, it brings Avalon horror and impact on her emotions, as death is a strong word, we would all act strongly with emotion towards it.…

    • 682 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    MacCaig has used metaphors, similes and personifications to enhance this poem. A personification in this poem that stands out is “The brown air fumes at the shop windows, tries the door and sidles past.” (stanza 1, line 3 & 4) The brown air is the heavily contaminated air, trying to infect our body with the poison that it contains. The air seems as though it is the enemy to our human body, and we create barriers, such as doors and windows, to protect us from the air.…

    • 590 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Within this poem is a lovely array of splendid imagery that allows the reader to truly feel as if they were there experiencing the memory themselves. When describing her surrounds they are idyllic, and pure. Even the dangers of the trip such as the jelly fish, or the steering of the boat, are never referred to as scary or unsafe, but calm…

    • 512 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Bruce Dawe

    • 538 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The technique of repetition is used in the dialogue of the weapons trainer, which shows his view on the war. “Dead, dead, dead,” this quote uses repetition; it is at he end of the poem and shows the audience that this is a very serious matter. The dialogue is from the weapons trainer to the soldiers and he is drilling this message into in an attempt to scare them. The rhetorical question, “what are you going to do about it?” reveals to the reader that the solider has power over the other soldiers; also he is trying to regain their attention and assert his power.…

    • 538 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The entire poem is a single sentence and the overall structure is unusual, with no rhyme, rhythm or pattern. This means the readers can read it as their own thoughts, enabling anyone who underestimated the war and its consequences to now develop some idea of how meaningless the masses of deaths were and how little recognition they were given. With sentences like All day, day after day, they’re bringing them home, and, they’re bringing them in, piled on the hulls of tanks, in trucks, in convoys, the plague like numbered deaths is emphasised greatly.…

    • 678 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Have you ever taken a risk and have it pay off greatly in the end? In the story “How I Spent my Last Night on Earth,” by Todd Strasser, the character named Legs takes a big risk and the outcome was very great. When reading Strasser’s story, the literary elements conflict, characterization, and point of view add excitement to the story. Strassers added enthusiasm to the story by making the conflict in the story something that can be related into the real world for most of his teenage audience. One conflict is that Legs was scared to talk to her crush Andros.…

    • 380 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    There are internal rhymes on lines 3, 5, 11, and 14. This poem is lyrical and reveals the speaker’s acceptance with Death. The speaker of the poem is a women who have passed away already recalling her moment with Death. The theme of the poem is one’s acceptance towards Death.…

    • 601 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Who is Alice Walker? Walker is an African-American Author, civil and a women’s right activist, born on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia. Walker attended Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, where she became involved in the civil rights movement. In 1964, with the assistance of Staughton Lynd, (a historian teacher/friend) transferred to Sarah Lawrence College.…

    • 657 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Lament For The Makaris

    • 1433 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The refrain is from the religious ceremony known as the Offices for the Dead, and its repetition at the end of each stanza drives home one of the poem’s central points: In the midst of life one is surrounded by death and should live accordingly. For a moralizing, religious poet such as Dunbar, this point entailed opposing a carpe diem (seize the day) philosophy; instead of living for the moment, people should constantly and consistently behave well in order to deserve a life after…

    • 1433 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Saturday Night and Sunday Morning tells the story of Arthur Seaton, a young Nottingham factory worker, who is having an affair with Brenda, the wife of Jack, an older co-worker. He also has a relationship with Doreen, a woman closer to his own age. When Brenda becomes pregnant with Arthur’s child, he goes to his aunt for advice on aborting the child. Jack discovers the affair. His brother and a fellow soldier give Arthur a serious beating. The play ends on an ambiguous note, with a recovered Arthur and Doreen discussing marriage and the prospect of a new home.…

    • 1427 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Ulysses

    • 676 Words
    • 3 Pages

    However, this poem also concerns the poet’s own personal journey, for it was composed in the first few weeks after Tennyson learned of the death of his dear college friend Arthur Henry Hallam in 1833. Like In Memoriam, then, this poem is also an elegy for a deeply cherished friend. Ulysses, who symbolizes the grieving poet, proclaims his resolution to push onward in spite of the…

    • 676 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Between sequence one to two, the significance of Kirsten Raymonde’s character dramatically increases. In sequence one, Kirsten is one of the few main characters the reader is initially introduced to. She has no ownership of the first sequence and her role is a way for Emily Mandel to convey to the audience the importance of imagery. Similar to snow and light, the glass paperweight given to Kirsten by Tanya, acts as a connecting component between the world before and after the pandemic. Towards the end of sequence two, Mandel mentions the glass paperweight once again. In Kirsten’s collection of objects of the past, the paperweight is, “nothing but dead weight in the bag but she found it beautiful” (66). Kirsten’s view of the paperweight symbolizes…

    • 742 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Leaving Belfast

    • 810 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The poem introduced us two people going to the airport. One of them has decided to stay in the city, but the other wants to leave it. On the way to the airport, the narrator looks back from the top of the hills of the road and feels nostalgia for leaving the city behind. The author uses lots of descriptions which are representative of the sadness of the narrator, but also of the image that the city had acquired. As the narrator states, he doesn’t leave Belfast because of fear, although the violence of the bombs could make him feel scared; he leave it because he feels like a stranger in his own city and because the political issues are having a tremendous impact in the habitants of the city.…

    • 810 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Week One Essay Example

    • 901 Words
    • 4 Pages

    In Sir John Betjeman’s poem “Five O’Clock Shadow,” the idea that the shadow of death physically and emotionally isolates and enervates those who dwell within it is conveyed through the utilization of metaphor and carefully selected words and phrases in the development of a tone and tonal shift, in addition to imagery. The title of the poem is the major metaphor of the piece; after the identification of who the speaker is (a dying man), the title means much more than the stubble of beard so-called “five o’clock shadow.” The wording of several phrases aids in the development of a detached tone where the speaker does not speak in the first person singular; this tone then shifts in the last line to be much more dismal, with the first and only occurrence of an “I” from the speaker’s perspective. The development of imagery is largely intertwined with the development of tone: when there is an apathetic or detached tone, the imagery is seemingly apathetic as well.…

    • 901 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays