‘Visiting Hour’

1. ‘Visiting Hour’ By Norman McCaig

2. Learning Intentions • Annotate your poem with areas you missed yesterday • Develop your own analysis skills • Work towards your Textual Analysis NAB using example questions

3. Annotations When analysing a poem, you should be in the habit of making annotations, which will help you write about the impact the poem has had on you. This means you need to analyse techniques and evaluation how successful the poet has been in putting forward their ideas.

4. Free verse used throughout to reflect poet’s confusion. Also suits narrative style of text – intro to character + setting then development, climax and epilogue. Enjambment – “What seems a corpse…/heavenward” the last words of the lines are emphasised. Carefully chosen to suggest a finality in “death” “Ward 7. Caesura – abruptness of non-sentence heightened by the dramatic pause it causes. Turning point in the poem – speaker must face emotions. Structure Verses deal with poet’s progression through the visit, from entering the hospital and making his way to the ward, up to him leaving. “A withered hard…stalk” – use of pronoun diminishes humanity of woman, suggesting the poet doesn’t feel like she is truly alive. Body is merely an empty shell, while she is effectively dead. Each verse reveals more about the poet’s emotions.

5. Metaphor – suggests a white-curtained bed, creates impression of emptiness as the vivid colour of hospital is not present. No vibrancy – suggestion of patient’s lack of understanding/life slipping away. “white cave of forgetfulness” Suggesting the white curtains or sheets are cave-like (impenetrable). This conveys the isolation of the woman, and the poet’s exclusion from her.

6. Contrast of colours – links with distance of pain. Speaker un a different place whilst she is lacking life/vitality and personality. Two figures – two different colours. “black figure in her white cave” Metaphor, referring to the universal image of Death, “figure” also suggesting the woman’s blurred vision. This emphasises the isolation of the woman, as well as her impending and unavoidable death.

7. Synaesthesia, as a visual image describes a sound (signalling the end of the Visiting Hour?). “swimming” could suggest the poet’s dizziness (confusion) or tears. This is from the woman’s point of view, so further shows her isolation, and the poet’s isolation from her. “the round swimming waves of a bell and dizzily goes off, growing fainter, not smaller. . .” Continues idea of speaker as a presence in the room rather than someone the patient interacts with/recognises.

8. The ending of the verse on this draws attention to the word, which underlines the purpose of his visit. Perhaps shows the poet’s desire to believe in an afterlife, especially at such troubling times. “farewells” Defined as “good wishes on parting”, the word is suggestive of the possibility the people will meet again, and that those departing are going on some kind of journey.

9. Textual Analysis Questions Answer the following questions using your notes and the additional help sheet. Use the same close reading formulae for the imagery, word choice, sentence structure. . . questions. Complete for Wed 31/08