Visiting Hour

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorHigh School, 12th grade September 2001

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Visiting Hour The poem "Visiting Hour" was written by Norman MacCaig. In my opinion the poem is about him visiting his sick wife in hospital.

As he walks towards his wife in ward seven he tells you what he is thinking and feeling. At the end in the last two paragraphs it tells you what the patient is thinking and feeling. In the poem the author uses many metaphors to describe his thoughts and feelings. He starts using them when he is walking along the corridors towards his wife. In paragraph two the metaphor he uses is "trundled into a lift and vanishes heavenwards," this is used because he sees a body being put into a lift an taken upwards which reminds him of someone going up to heaven when they die.

In paragraph four the metaphor he used was "their slender waist miraculously carrying their burden of so much pain".

This means that the nurses have seen so many deaths that it is beginning to affect them.

In the last two paragraphs the author describes the patients thoughts with many metophores. Some of them are "in the white cave of forgetfulness," which is his wife lying in the white sheets not able to remember anything." A withered hand trembles on it's stalk," is another one. This is her hand that is shaking on her arm, which is thin and weak just like the stalk of a plant. Another one is "a glass fang is fixed, not guzzling but giving," this is the drip giving her blood instead of a wolf or vampires fang taking it from her. The very last metaphor was "fruitless fruits," this is an oxymoron which means it contradicts it's self this is because a fruit can't be fruitless. It was trying to give the...