Hotel Room 12th Floor

“Hotel Room 12th Floor”

Setting: the title of the poem suggests impersonal surroundings and isolation

“This morning”

Word choice: establishes the poems setting at the start of the poem

“helicopter skirting”

Word choice: suggests circlingthe edge or border of something. It suggests close proximity which in turn reveals connotations of risk fear and danger

“helicopter skirting like a damaged insect”

Simile: compares the look and sound of the helicopter to a damaged insect-wings motion buzzing sound. Like a damaged insect would fly erratically, so too is the helicopter flying in an uncontrolled and potentially dangerous manner

“Empire State Building”

Famous landmark (NYC setting established) that was a symbol of technological progress and pursuit of wealth at the time

“jumbo sized dentist’s drill”

Metaphor: compares the huge building to a dentist’s drill-mockingly reduces the ESB to something tiny and which causes pain/fear and suffering to humans

“But” (structure)

Turning point: the time shifts from day to night. The mood of the poem changes into something more solemn and dangerous

“midnight”

Personification: suggests midnight is a creature with a mind of it own and the ability to move and threaten

“foreign”

Word choice: a menacingly vague description that depicts the darkness as alien

“uncivilized darkness”

Word choice: suggests its barbaric dangerous

“shot at”

Word choice: a reference to the WW-suggests widespread violence and aggression in the city. The image suggests the buildings of the city in battle with the surrounding darkness (good v evil)

“ups and acrosses”

Word choice: religious connotations. The window frames are in the form of the cross. The idea of good fighting evil and darkness

“But” (WC)

Word choice: suggests that the attempt to defeat darkness will not succeed

“not so easily defeated”

Enjambment: emphasises the negative outlook

“I lie in bed between a radio and a television set”

Word choice: suggests either a wish to drown out the noise from the outside and/or the pervasive presence of noisy technology

“wildest”

Word choice: has connotations of an uncivilised, perhaps brutal culture

“wildest of warwhoops”

Alliteration: repeated w sound mimics the wail and the repetitive sound of the sirens, intensifying the threatening, violent and uncivilised nature of the street violence

“lulating”

Word choice: suggests a frightening wailing or screeching sound-violent atmosphere created

“glittering canyons and gulches”

Metaphor: city streets and their high buildings are being compared to canyons/gulches. The streets with the high buildings on both sides resembles the WW landscape. Both are areas of ambush-suggesting the streets are just as dangerous

Police cars and ambulances”

Word choice: suggests law-breaking and injuries are prevalent

“racing”

Word choice: suggests speed and urgency that the injuries are serious

“the broken bones, the harsh screaming from coldwater flats, the blood glazed on sidewalks”

Synecdoche: people are reduced to damaged body parts, noises spilled fluids. Lack of specificity shows how widespread the violence is

List: shows scale of suffering and widespread nature of violence

“harsh screaming”

Word choice: suggests painful cries of suffering

“coldwater flats”

Word choice: suggests poverty and inequality

“Broken bones”

Word choice: suggests brutal violence and bodily damage-hard alliteration of b empahsises this

“blood glazed”

Word choice: suggests there is so much blood it is fixed/imprinted on the sidewalk

“frontier”

Word choice: the invisible line between civilised and uncivilised areas. The poet is reminding us that there is always such a line- and it is right beside us, because it is always within us

“never” “no”

Word choice: creates a negative tone the match up with the bleak view/mood of the poem as a whole

“stockades”

Word choice: were the defensive barriers built to keep out the allegedly uncivilised Red Indians; the poet is reminding us that there is no way to keep out the “darkness” that still exists in humanity. It is an ever-present danger