Norman MacCaig

“Outside the three tiers” “In honour of St Francis”

• word choice highlights isolation

• ironic tone - dwarf’s begging outside church built in honour of someone who loved the poor

• evident hypocricy

• dehumanised by those who walk past him, seen as an object instead of human

“How clever it was of Giotto to make his frescoes tell stories”

• frescoes were meant to be told to the illiterate but the beggar (who we can assume isn’t educated) is getting ignored

• priest is a hypocrite

“Lopsided mouth said Grazie in a voice as sweet as a child’s”

• poet builds idea of ‘ruined’

• simile highlights innocence of dwarf and beauty inside him

• theme of inner and outer beauty

• describing appearance makes final lines more poignant

“To stub an oar on a rock”

• infinite verb to capture attention

• shark compared to rock with metaphor to suggest it’s bulky without feeling/intelligence

“Roomsized monster with a matchbox brain”

• metaphor emphasises size

• word choice suggests it’s low down on evolutionary scale

• metaphor suggests it’s the opposite of us (large animal+small brain)

“Displaced more than water”

• word choice suggests that he rethinks man’s position in nature

“Emerging from the slime of everything”

• word choice reinforces epiphanic sense of clarity associating coming out of dark into light

• linking evolution of humanity with shark

“Built like a gorilla but less timid”

• simile to emphasise policeman is built like a huge animal

• ironic tone - reinforces cop’s brutality

“Thin tissue over voilence”

• word choice suggests violence is ever present and peace is only temporary

“He hoped it, he truly hoped it”

• repetition stresses danger of environment, hinting at desparation

• word choice suggests vulnerability behind his tough facade

“Should the tissue tear, should he plunge through”

• word choice emphasises speaker is a worrier

• metaphor highlights the break of peace into violence

• word choice suggests a sudden desent, plunge from civilisation to violence

“Stained with peat”

• word choice suggests that she is stepped into the environment, part of nature

• connects her to landscape

“She was buckets and water flouncing into them” “She was winds pouring wetly”

• metaphor connects her directly to nature

• alliteration compares her to weather to show how strong she is

• force of nature

• word choice gives description of deliberate, vigorous way she moved

“Aunt Julia spoke Gaelic”

• parallelism - links back to beginning to emphasise their bond

• don’t speak the same but share the same bond

“Silenced in the absolute black”

• change tone of melancholy - more profound, deeper connotations

• suggests finality

• contrast of her vibrant life

• enjabment emphasises ‘silence’

• unsettling tone describes the ‘absolute black’ of her grave

“This morning I watched from here a helicopter skirting like a damaged insect”

Passive - he is not taking part in what he sees

Technology is symbol of technology that society is based on

Annoying and broken - unpleasant connotations

“jumbo size dentist’s drill”

Connotations of fear and pain

“But now Midnight has come in from foreign places”

Shows turning point

Midnight connection to darkness

Foreign - unfamiliar, strange

“Its uncivilised darkness”

What can’t be seen is feared

“combs my nostrils as they go bobbing along”

Synecdoche uses his nostrils to refer to himself, suggesting that all other senses have been blocked out

”green and yellow corridors”

Connotations of sickness

“corpse is trundled into a lift and vanishes heavenward”

Issue of mortality is evident

Rising lift becomes symbolic of the journey to heaven, metaphor

Enjabment of ‘heavenward’ reinforces finality+isolation of death

“I will not feel, I will not feel”

Repetition shows the speaker’s determination to not allow his emotions to overpower him

“Nurses walk lightly, swiftly”

“here and up and down and there”

Suggests an easy, almost carefree quality to their movements

Constantly on the move

“Ward 7”

We have followed the speaker’s journey and they are now at their destination, use of caesura

“white cave of forgetfulness”

Isolation and lack of sensory awareness in current state

“withered hand trembles on its stalk”

Compares to flower dying, once suggesting her past vitality

‘Its’ suggests that her body is an empty shell - the person she once was has gobe

Theme of Isolation

“Outside the three tiers”

“Aunt Julia spoke Gaelic”

“combs my nostrils as they go bobbing along”

“Ward 7”

“white cave of forgetfulness”

“black figure in her white cave”

Theme of Death of a Family Member

“Silenced in the absolute black”

“withered hand trembles on its stalk”

“corpse is trundled into a lift and vanishes heavenward”

“fruitless fruits”

Theme of Hypocrisy

“in honour of St Francis”

Theme of Fear

“I will not feel, I will not feel”

Theme of Connection to Nature

“To stub an oar on a rock”

“Roomsized monster with a matchbox brain”

“displaced more than water”

“Emerging from the slime of everything”

“Stained with peat”

“She was buckets and water flouncing into them”

“She was winds pouring wetly”

Theme of Violence

“thin tissue over violence”

“Should the tissue tear, should he plunge through”

“But now midnight has come in from foreign places”

Theme of Inner Beauty

“lopsided mouth said Grazie in a voice as sweet as a child’s”