Please Hold - Ciaran O'Driscoll

Society and culture

Ciaran O'Driscoll intricately weaves a critique of contemporary society, exploring the dehumanizing effects of technological and bureaucratic systems. The poem presents an individual caught in a relentless cycle of impersonal communication and alienation, where human connection is reduced to a series of automated voices and insipid messages. This disconnect between the individual and the society they inhabit becomes emblematic of a world increasingly governed by efficiency over empathy. 

Power

Sense of futility and powerlessness, reflecting how humans are reduced to passive recipients of technology’s cold efficiency. The future is not a place of progress but a bureaucratic maze where the individual is trapped. O'Driscoll highlights how power in this modern context is not overtly exercised through physical force but rather through bureaucratic control and the depersonalizing influence of technology, which subtly erodes personal autonomy and reconfigures societal interactions into a web of systemic subjugation. 

Disillusionment

Technological disillusionment. Although not explicit, the poem’s portrayal of a world dominated by robotic systems resonates with dystopian literature, where technology strips away personal freedom and individuality. The poem suggests that the future imagined in such works has become reality. 

O'Driscoll's portrayal of the persona’s experience reflects a society that prioritizes processes over people, capturing the profound sense of isolation and disillusionment that emerges in a world where human agency is eclipsed by technological facelessness. 

Structure/form

• Lack of stanzas, epistrophe (repetition of words/phrases at the end of sentences) and cyclical structure could show monotony and repetitive nature. Repetition makes the poem tonally flat to evoke the agonizing reality of modern technological systems (contrast between should should be the progressive nature of technological advancements with the persona’s experience of waiting and being kept ‘on hold’)

• For the most part, the poem is one single unbroken stanza. could reflect speaker’s strong emotions, and inability to impose a rigid structure or order over their thoughts. could alternatively represent a passage of time, and the rapid progression of technology. Occasional enjambed lines propel pace of poem onwards, speaker feels as if he cannot stop this

• Repetition and frequent parallelism emphasizes the mechanical, robotic nature of the automated message. The repeated phrase mirrors the speaker’s experience of being trapped in a never-ending loop. It also conveys the monotony and emotional exhaustion caused by being stuck on hold, symbolizing the repetitive frustrations of modern life 

• Written in free verse so doesn’t follow any meter or rhyme scheme. As a result, the style is conversational, direct and purposely unpoetic (reflective of a soulless robot and transactional conversation). Whilst it is written in free verse, the lines are fairly uniform in length. This makes it feel a bit static and predictable, echoing the idea that the future is ‘the same / as the present

‘Please hold. Please grow old. Please grow cold.’ 

• Plosive ‘p’ repetition through the syntactically paralleling phrases ‘please’ emphasises a disjointed nature, breaking down 

• Short and monosyllabic clauses (blunt syntax) reflects monotony - in conjunction with anaphora ‘please’ and internal rhyme creates a deadening effect to the line. the economy of language echoes the barrenness that it describes - the speaker being left feeling hopeless and alone

• ‘grow cold’ in conjunction with the end-stopped line explores how humans will inevitably die, whereas technology is not finite. ‘Cold’ connotes emotional and physical detachment, as well as the idea of death and decay. This gradual desensitisation underscores the alienating power of technology and the bureaucracy, which renders human existence mechanical  

• Cyclical structure of beginning and end of poem ‘please hold’ 

• These lines are fragmented in a separate stanza to the rest of the poem, exploring the explicit disconnection and lack of conversational flow with the robot.  (disconnect between the individual and the society that they inhabit)

‘Eine fucking Kleine Nachtmusik’ 

• Contrast to the formality of the robotic language and the lack of emotional expression - reflective of the persona’s annoyance

• Use of taboo language through the profanity ‘fucking’ shows a break from social conventions and what is traditionally considered to be poetic

• By juxtaposing Mozart’s culturally refined ‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik’ with the vulgarity of the profanity ‘fucking’ O’Driscoll critiques the artistic imagination that is slowly being crushed by society’s crass drive for bureaucracy and technology 

• the syntactic placement of the profanity ‘fucking’, renders it trapped between the Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. If we consider the Eine Kleine Nachtmusik to be emblematic of the robot and a technological world, then the effect of ‘fucking’ (as a representation of the speaker’s emotions) is syntactically embedded or trapped within this. could explore the persona’s feelings of being stuck, trapped, surrounded, kept on hold…

‘Telephone number’ ‘account number’ 

• Depersonalises people into numbers/data within a mechanised system (we are powerless and devalued), reducing their identity into merely a sequence of digits

• Epistrophe of ‘number’ uses repetition to emphasise frustration, entrapment and tedium 

• Deadening effect to rhythm of  poem  

‘wonderful’ ‘great’

• O’Driscoll’s tone is ironic and satirical, mocking the robot’s hyperbolic responses

‘Please Hold’ 

• The act of holding or waiting bears connotations of stagnation, suggesting that the speaker’s life is subjected to the slow erosion of vitality, as they are caught in an existential limbo.  

• short, blunt syntax and economy of language mirrors the barrenness that it describes. Transactional

‘Your future’ 

• Use of pronoun ‘your’ not only addresses the narrator but also the reader. 

• O'Driscoll's portrayal of the persona’s experience reflects a society that prioritizes processes over people, capturing the profound sense of isolation and disillusionment that emerges in a world where human agency is eclipsed by technological facelessness.