A Note on Themes - Liminal Spaces

The question in the A level examinations will be on a “theme” – a central concern or idea which may form the focus of the poem or be an integral part of its meaning.  You will be asked to explore the presentation of this “theme” in one named poem and one other poem of your choice. 

These “themes” could include, but not be limited to:  an emotion – such as love, loss, sorrow, joy; the evocation of “place”, as the subject of the poem or as the setting for the poem; the treatment of abstract concepts such as Time, or Death, or Religion; a “happening” such as War, Childhood, Marriage; the relationships between men and women.  The range is very broad.  Where a poem lends itself to suggesting a particular theme, this has been noted in the explication.  However, these suggestions are not exhaustive; one of the skills to be mastered is to know the texts well enough to be able to link them to themes which may not be immediately obvious. 

In addition to this, there is one “theme” which seems to run through most of the selection, so it has been explored and illustrated below. 

Liminal Spaces

Liminal means “threshold”, the part of a door that you step across to move from one space to another.  Liminality is the space between different states – between night and day (dawn), between day and night (twilight), between life and death, between out and in.

Most of the poems in the selection are similarly concerned with situations where the poet/persona, or the setting, or the subject matter, or more than one of these, are “in between” states or spaces.  

Tennyson

In “In Memoriam – VII”, Tennyson seems unable to move on from the living presence of Hallam on the street he revisits; “XCV” is set between night and day – a night when he seems to move from sorrow to reconciliation; the “Maud” poems are full of liminal images – “I.xi” is set between the “solid ground” and “sweet heavens”; “I.xviii” is set at the point where Maud is both “his” and “not his” – he is on the verge of a consummation of their love, but it is never realised;  Maud does not “Come into the Garden” – we leave the narrator still waiting; II.iv ”O that ‘twere possible” imagines Maud as a ghost, caught between life and death and the narrator as a confused “wasted frame”.

Emily & Charlotte Bronte – The Visionary

The setting is inside, but the focus is on the visitor coming through the winter weather to visit her.  She is in a “limbo”, where the Visionary is anticipated (as in “Come into the garden, Maud”) but not yet realised.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“Grief” explores the emotion of the title, with a central image of a statue, lifelike, but dead and unable to “move on”; The subject of “Died...” is both alive and dead at the same time; they are talking about him as if alive, even as his obituary notice travels to them from London.

Robert Browning

The Duke in “My Last Duchess” is, literally, “between” Duchesses; In “Home Thoughts…”, the poet is in Italy but casting his thoughts toward England, and is thus caught between the two; the focus of “Meeting at Night” is in the space between “not with the beloved” and “with the beloved”; In “Love in a Life” the focus is on the emptiness between the beloved being “not found” and “found” and remains unresolved.

Charlotte Bronte

All of the poems in the selection by Charlotte Bronte are set in liminal space.  “The Autumn day” is set at Twilight: “The house was still…” is also set at twilight, and the birds’ songs occupy the space between indoors (the canary) and outdoors (the free bird); “I now had only to retrace” recounts the point at which the poet turns back from her outward walk to head for home; “The Nurse believed…” has a question at its heart – is the man alive or dead?; ”Stanzas” opens with a statement that puts the poet in a space between the world of the imagination and the real world.

Christina Rossetti

“Remember” explores memory – the place where the dead still exist for the living; an “Echo” exists in the space between the first sound and the return (as in the songs between the birds in “The house was still”); “May” captures the very moment when she “passes” from a feeling of hope and joy to one of desolation, as Tennyson does in reverse in XCV; “Somewhere or other” by its title suggests that the poet is caught between anticipation and consummation with only a “hedge between”.

Thomas Hardy

In “At the Inn”, the poet describes the two “As we seemed we were not” – they existed both as lovers, to the innkeeper, but were not; lovers and yet not lovers (like the alive/dead man in “Died…” or in “The Nurse…”); In “I Look into My Glass”, a mirror is a space between the reality and the reflection in the mirror, where Hardy seems to exist as both young, on the inside, and old, on the outside; even “Drummer Hodge” seems to lie between England, where he was born, and Africa, where his body is, as if a bit of England has been transported out there; “A wife in London” captures the time between receiving notice of her husband’s death and a letter written in the dead man’s hand – again, there was a moment where he was both alive AND dead; “The Darkling Thrush” is set at the turn of the year and the turn of the century – New Year’s Eve, 1899.  A liminal space indeed.

'The Color Purple' characterisation

Characters

Celie – The novel's protagonist, at the beginning of the novel Celie is quiet, passive, and able to express herself only through letters to God. As a teenager she is repeatedly raped by her father (later revealed to be her stepfather), Pa, and gives birth to two children, Olivia and Adam, whom her stepfather gives away and who are raised by a missionary couple. Celie is then married off to Mr. _____, who wants her only for her work ethic and regularly beats her. Celie tries to protect her sister, Nettie, and helps her to run away first from Pa and then from Mr. ____ when both try to rape her, too, at different times. Celie's attempts to get free of the men in her life, to discover her sexuality and to learn to love (both primarily through the female singer Shug Avery), to gain both her social and emotional independence, to find spiritual satisfaction and connection to God, and to find Nettie form the drama of the book, which is constructed as a series of letters between Celie and God, and between Celie and Nettie.

 

Nettie – Celie's more attractive younger sister. Forced to leave first her own home when Pa turns his sexual attention to her and then Mr. _____'s house after he makes sexual advances toward her, Nettie ends up helping out in the household of Reverend Samuel and his wife Corrine. The three of them, and the couple's adopted children Adam and Olivia (who are Celie's biological children), travel to Africa to serve as missionaries to the Olinka people. There, Nettie becomes educated and gains a new spiritual understanding of the world that mirrors Celie's own, and later marries Samuel after Corrine dies of disease. Nettie is later reunited with her sister, and she, as step-mother to Adam and Olivia, introduces the children to their biological mother at the novel's end.

 

Mr. _____ (Albert) – An abusive husband who emotionally and physically abuses Celie in order to control her. He carries on a relationship with the singer Shug throughout much of their marriage. He has multiple children by multiple women, but his overriding love is for Shug. After both Shug and Celie leave him, Mr. _____ realises how much he depended on them and how cruelly he acted toward Celie in particular. He "finds religion" and apologises to Celie, and they close out the novel as friends; Mr. gives Celie a purple frog to symbolise their new friendship.

 

Shug Avery – A singer who is considered a "nasty woman" by those in the community, because she has relationships with numerous men, Shug becomes friends (and, later, lovers) with Celie, teaching Celie about sexuality, love, and spirituality in the process. She also carries on a long-standing relationship with Mr. _____, who is married to Celie for much of that time. After leaving Celie, with whom she was living in Memphis, for "one last fling" with a young man named Germaine, Shug returns to Celie and lives in her home in Georgia.

 

Pa (Alphonso) – Celie's sexually-abusive father, Pa is later revealed to be Celie's stepfather, meaning that Celie can inherit her biological father's house and dry-goods business after Pa's death, and that the children she bore as a result of Pa's sexual abuse were not the product of incest.

 

Sofia – A strong-minded and physically strong woman, and first wife of Harpo. She does not brook any discrimination from white people or physical or other efforts to control her by men, Sofia is sent to prison for fighting the (white) mayor and his wife. She later serves as maid in the mayor's house for almost twelve years, helping to raise his children. Sofia then returns to Celie's home, where her own children with Harpo no longer recognise her.

 

Harpo – Mr. _____'s oldest son, who is raised by Celie. Harpo is an essentially good man, but he drives Sofia, his first wife, away by trying to get her to "mind" (or obey) him. Harpo later marries a woman named Squeak, or Mary Agnes, and opens a jukejoint (bar) on his property in Georgia.

 

Squeak – Harpo's second wife, Squeak begins the novel as a physically weak and unimposing woman, who comes into her own over the course of the novel. She later leaves Harpo to run off with Grady, Shug's husband, in order to have a singing career. Squeak then returns to Celie's home just before the novel's end.

 

Buster Broadnax – Sofia's husband after Harpo, Buster is a prizefighter who has Sofia's best interests at heart. He helps to raise their children when Sofia is in prison and when she is working as maid to the mayor's family.

 

Grady – Husband to Shug, Grady is never trusted by Celie or by Mr. _____. It is later revealed that he runs off to Panama with Squeak, in order to work on a marijuana farm.

 

The Mayor and Miss Millie – The white mayor of the small town near Celie's and Mr.'s property. The Mayor, along with his wife Millie, are genteel and racist, and are the master and mistress of the home in which Sofia works for nearly a dozen years.

 

Eleanor Jane, Stanley Earl, and Reynolds – Eleanor Jane, the mayor's daughter, becomes close to Sofia, the woman who raised her. Sofia is civil to Eleanor's husband Stanley Earl, but Sofia refuses to gush and dote upon Reynolds, their son, explaining to Eleanor that she (Sofia) has already been made to care for a white family that is not hers, at the expense of caring for her own family.

Samuel – A reverend, married to Corrine. Kind and good, Samuel adopts two children, Olivia and Adam, who are given to him by Pa (and who turn out to be Celie's children). He and his wife also take in Nettie after she flees from Mr. _____'s house, not realising that she is the children's aunt. He travels with his wife, two children, and Nettie, to Africa, where he serves as a missionary to the Olinka. After his wife's death, Samuel marries Nettie, and the entire family travels back to Georgia to reunite with Celie.

 

Corrine – Samuel's wife, Corrine doubts, until just before her death, that Samuel is telling the truth about the children—Corrine believes that Samuel and Nettie had an affair, and that Olivia and Adam are therefore Samuel and Nettie's biological children. Corrine finally believes Nettie, however, before she succumbs to her illness and dies among the Olinka.

 

Adam – Nettie's stepson and Celie's son, Adam grows up in Africa, raised by Nettie, Samuel, and Corrine. After the Olinka woman he loves, Tashi, undergoes the ritual facial scarring of her tribe, and then is ashamed of having done so, he undergoes the same scarring. He marries Tashi before moving back to the United States with his family.

 

Olivia – Adam's sister, Olivia is recognised by Celie early in the novel as being her biological daughter when she spots her with Corrine in a store, but Olivia is raised by Samuel, Corrine, and Nettie, and is not reunited with Celie until the very end of the book.

 

Tashi – An Olinka girl educated in the Western manner, Tashi elects to undergo the ritual female circumcision and face scarring of the Olinka, then feels ashamed of having done so. She ends the novel by marrying Adam and moving to the United States with him, Nettie, and Samuel.

 

Henrietta and Suzie Q. – Squeak and Harpo's children, Henrietta and Suzie Q. are raised largely by Sofia. Suzie Q. is a gifted singer, and Henrietta suffers from sickle-cell anemia, and is nursed by Sofia and the rest of the family.

 

Bub and Mr.'s other children – Bub and Mr.'s other children are considered "rotten" by Celie. They are "bad seeds," and they disappear midway through the novel; Bub is always in trouble with the law, and the others merely run away.

 

Catherine – Tashi's mother, Catherine does not approve of the Western-style education that Tashi receives from Samuel and Corrine, and eventually goes to live with Tashi among the mbeles, or Africans resisting British rule, in the jungle.

 

Miss Beasley – Nettie and Celie's teacher, Miss Beasley pleads with Pa early in the novel to let Celie attend school; but, finding out that Celie is pregnant, Miss Beasley breaks off her protests.

 

Kate and Carrie – Mr. _____'s sisters, Kate and Carrie help Celie to shop for clothing, since Mr. _____ provides her with almost none at all.

 

Jack and Odessa – Odessa is Sofia's sister, who helps to raise Sofia's family when Sofia is working as a maid to the mayor. Jack is Odessa's husband.

Daisy – Pa's final wife, Daisy is very young at the time of their marriage—not more than fifteen.

 

Germaine – Shug has a final fling with Germaine, a young man who settles in Arizona, on a Native American reservation, where he hopes to teach those who live there.

 

Doris – An Englishwoman who travelled to Africa to serve as a missionary. Doris meets Samuel and Nettie on a boat back to England, and shows to them her African grandchildren, much to the scandal of others on the boat.

 

Celie and Nettie's mother – After the death of her husband who is lynched by a gang of white men, Celie and Nettie's mother falls into a deep depression. She eventually marries Pa, and never tells the girls that Pa is not their actual father. As she lies depressed in bed, Pa rapes Celie. She dies early in the story.

 

 

 

Themes of 'The Color Purple'

Themes

 

God and Spirituality

The first words written by Celie, the novel's protagonist, are "Dear God," and the novel ends with a letter, the salutation of which reads, "Dear God. Dear stars, dear trees, dear sky, dear peoples. Dear Everything. Dear God." This encapsulates The Color Purple's relationship to religion and spirituality: a transition from a belief in a single God, an old white man in a long beard, to a God that exists all around, and is a part of human happiness. Celie begins writing letters to God in order to survive the her father's sexual abuse; she later comes to view God as an outgrowth of nature's beauty, after Shug convinces her that God is more than what white people say, and what church teachings confirm.

Although Shug is not typically religious, she believes strongly that God wants people to be happy, and that God, too, wants to be loved, just as people do. Nettie serves as a missionary to the Olinka people, intending to spread Christianity, but realises, like her sister, that God is more pervasive, more bound up in nature than some Christian teaching suggests. Even Mr. _____ comes to realise that he behaved evilly as a young man, and his growing belief in the "wonder" of God's creation makes him a better person, and a friend to Celie. Nettie's return to Celie, at the novel's end, confirms that the beauty of family togetherness is one manifestation of God's power on earth.

Race and Racism

The novel takes place in two distinct settings—rural Georgia and a remote African village—both suffused with problems of race and racism. Celie believes herself to be ugly in part because of her very dark skin. Sofia, after fighting back against the genteel racism of the mayor and his wife, ends up serving as maid to that family, and as surrogate mother to Eleanor, who does not initially recognizs the sacrifices Sofia has been forced to make. In general, very few career paths are open to the African Americans in the novel: for the men, farming is the main occupation, although Harpo manages to open a bar. For women, it seems only possible to serve as a mother, or to perform for a living, to sing as Squeak and Shug Avery do.

 

In Africa, the situation Nettie, Samuel, Corrine, Adam, Tashi, and Olivia experience is not that much different. Nettie recalls that the ancestors of the Olinka, with whom she lives, sold her ancestors into slavery in America. The Olinka view African Americans with indifference. Meanwhile the English rubber workers, who build roads through the village and displace the Olinka from their ancient land, have very little concern for that people's history in Africa. The British feel that, because they are developing the land, they "own" it, and the African people who have lived there for centuries are merely "backward" natives. It is only at the very end of the novel, after Samuel, Nettie, and their family have returned from Africa, to Celie's home in Georgia, that Celie and Nettie's entire family is able to come together and dine—a small gift, and something that would be considered completely normal for the white families of that time period, whose lives had not been ripped apart by the legacy of slavery and poverty.

Men, Women, and Gender Roles

The novel is also an extended meditation on the nature of men, women, and their expected gender roles. In the beginning, Celie is expected to serve her abusive father, and, later, her husband Mr. _____, and Nettie, not wanting to do either, runs away. But Nettie sacrifices the job generally reserved for women—motherhood—in order to educate herself and work for Samuel and Corrine during their missionary labours in Africa. Celie, meanwhile, has two children, whom Nettie then raises in Africa, coincidentally—Celie only leaves behind the drudgery of housework when Shug comes to live with her and Mr. _____ and begins to teach Celie about her body and about other ways of living, outside the control of men. Celie and Squeak, Harpo's second wife, end up living with Shug in Memphis, and Celie is able to start her pants-making company.

The men in the novel, however, experience a different trajectory. It is expected that black men of this time, especially in the South, work in the fields, and that women obey them absolutely. But after Shug and then Celie leave him behind, Mr. _____ realises just how much he took for granted and how much he, and his son Harpo, have relied on the work of women throughout their lives. Similarly, in Africa, Nettie manages both to achieve the gender role initially expected of her (by marrying the widower Samuel), and keeps working and forging her own path in life, eventually spending over twenty years as a missionary in Africa.

 

The end of the novel, then, celebrates both the continuity of family, populated both by strong female characters and repentant male ones, and the fact that "families," and the roles within them, are fluid, often overlapping, and part of a long arc toward equality and greater understanding, even if that arc is often dotted with tragedy, abuse, and neglect.

Violence and Suffering

Violence and suffering in 'The Color Purple' are typically depicted as part of a greater cycle of tragedy taking place both on the family level and on a broader social scale. Celie is raped by her stepfather and beaten for many years by her husband, only to have Shug Avery intervene on her behalf. Sofia is nearly beaten to death by white police officers after pushing a white family; she nearly dies in prison. Nettie is almost raped by her stepfather and by Mr. _____, and must run away in order to protect herself. Harpo tries, unsuccessfully, to beat and control Sofia, his first wife, and he beats Squeak until she leaves him for Grady (though Squeak returns to Celie's home at the end of the novel). These cycles of violence are repeated across the South: Celie's biological father and uncles were lynched by whites jealous of their business success, and there is always the threat that, if black people agitate too much for their rights, they will be struck down by the white people who control the local and state government.

In Africa, too, this violence occurs within the local culture and in the relation between whites and blacks. Men in the Olinka village have absolute control over their wives, and a scarring ritual takes place for all women going through permanently, leaving their faces permanently marked. The white British rubber dealers who take over the Olinka land end up killing a great many in the village, without concern for the humanity or customs of the Olinka, who have lived there for many years. But despite all this violence and suffering, there is a core of hope in the novel: the hope that Celie and Nettie might be reunited. It is this hope that, eventually, stops the cycle of violence, at least within Celie's family, and enables the reunion of many of the family members in Georgia at the novel's end.

Self-Discovery

The novel is, ultimately, a journey of self-discovery for Celie, and for other characters. Celie begins the novel as a passive, quiet young girl, perplexed by her own pregnancy, by her rape at the hands of Pa, and her ill-treatment by Mr. _____. Slowly, after meeting Shug and seeing her sister run away, Celie develops practical skills: she is a hard worker in the fields, she learns how to manage a house and raise children, and she meets other inspiring women, including Sofia, who has always had to fight the men in her life. Further, she discovers her own sexuality and capacity to love through her developing romance with Shug. Eventually, Celie discovers that her sister Nettie has been writing to her all along, and this, coupled with Shug's support, allows Celie to confront Mr. _____, to move to Memphis with Shug, to begin her own pants company, and, eventually, to make enough money to be independent. Celie's luck begins to change: she inherits her biological father's estate, allowing her greater financial freedom, and she manages to repair her relationship with Mr. _____ (he gives her a purple frog as a symbol of his recognition of his earlier bad behaviour), and create a kind of family with Mr. _____ Shug, Harpo, Sofia, Squeak, Nettie, and her own children.

 

Nettie's arc is also one of self-discovery. Nettie received more years of schooling than did Celie, and Nettie has seen the world, working as a missionary in Africa, and eventually marrying a kind and intelligent man. But Nettie also realises that she can balance her independence, and her desire to work, with a loving married life that also includes two stepchildren—Celie's children, Olivia and Adam. Indeed, it is the arrival of this extended family on Celie's land at the end of the novel that signals the last stage in both Celie's and Nettie's journey of self-discovery. The sisters have found themselves, and now, as the novel closes, they have found each other.

Character analysis Tom Gradgrind

Character analysis Sissy Jupe

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Charater analysis Harthouse

Character analysis Gradgrind

'You, Shiva and My Mum' by Ruth Padel

'Genetics' by Sinead Morissey

'Giuseppe' by Roderick Ford

'A Minor Role' by UA Fanthorpe

 

'The Lammas Hireling' by Ian Duhig

'The Furthest Distances I've Travelled' by Leontia Flynn

 

'Effects' by Alan Jenkins

ODE TO A GRAYSON PERRY URN

Grayson Perry as "Claire"

Greek vase - 800 - 650 BC

OUT OF THE BAG - Seamus Heaney

OUT OF THE BAG - Seamus Heaney

I have sent an email to you all with an annotated walk-through of this poem.  Themes that are explored include childhood, memory, the creative process.

Other things you should note:

The poem is  in iambic pentametre - five iambic beats (ti-TUM; light - HEAVY) in each line.

And by the time he'd reappear to wash

The use of enjambment within this regular rhythm maintains the flow between lines, creating a conversational tone:

And by the time he'd reappear to wash

Those nosy, rosy, big, soft hands of his
In the scullery basin, 

One of Heaney's favourite tricks is to use enjambment and caesura (a break in the middle of the line) to create an emphasis on key words by putting them at the beginning of the line following the enjambement, and reversing the light-heavy beat, often using the enjambement to mirror the meaning of the words themselves:

                                  Then like a hypnotist
Unwinding us, he'd wind the instruments

Back into their lining,

or 

The baby bits all came together swimming

Into his soapy big hygienic hands

All this gives his poems a sense of being musing recollections, deceptively casual, as if the poetry emerges out of a conversation or reminiscence.  

Look at the use of the vowels i and l  in these lines, followed by the use of o and then the final ol:

skimmed
Milk and ice, swabbed porcelain, the white

And chill of tiles, steel hooks, chrome surgery tools
And blood dreeps, in the sawdust where it thickened
At the foot of each cold wall.

This is painting with words - quite literally - as he moves from the sterility of the imagined laboratory  i and l)to the awful vision of the blood which must accompany his "baby making",

 (o and oo)  coming together as it "dreeps" - seeps and drips - down the "cold" walls.  Genius.

  

I

All of us came in Doctor Kerlin's bag[EC1] 
He'd arrive with it, disappear to the room[LC2] 
And by the time he'd reappear to wash

Those nosy, rosy, big, soft hands [LC3] of his
In the scullery basin, its lined insides
(The colour of a spaniel's inside lug)

Were empty for all to see[LC4] , the trap-sprung mouth
Unsnibbed and gaping wide. Then like a hypnotist
Unwinding us, he'd wind the instruments

Back into their lining[LC5] , tie the cloth
Like an apron round itself,
Darken the door and leave

With the bag in his hand, a plump ark by the keel [LC6] ...
Until the next time came and in he'd come
In his fur-lined collar that was also spaniel-coloured

And go stooping up to the room again, a whiff
Of disinfectant, a Dutch interior [LC7] gleam
Of waistcoat satin and highlights on the forceps.

Getting the water ready, that was next—
Not plumping hot, and not lukewarm, but soft,
Sud-luscious, saved for him from the rain-butt[LC8] 

And savoured by him afterwards, all thanks
Denied as he towelled hard and fast,
Then held his arms out suddenly behind him

To be squired and silk-lined into the camel coat.
At which point he once turned his eyes upon me,
Hyperborean[LC9] , beyond-the-north-wind blue,

Two peepholes to the locked room [LC10] I saw into
Every time his name was mentioned, skimmed
Milk and ice, swabbed porcelain, the white

And chill of tiles, steel hooks[LC11] , chrome surgery tools
And blood dreeps[LC12]  in the sawdust where it thickened
At the foot of each cold wall. And overhead

The little, pendent,[LC13]  teat-hued infant parts
Strung neatly from a line up near the ceiling—
A toe, a foot and shin, an arm, a cock

A bit like the rosebud in his buttonhole.

II[LC14] 

Poeta doctus Peter Levi[LC15]  says
Sanctuaries of Asclepius[LC16]  (called asclepions)
Were the equivalent of hospitals

In ancient Greece. Or of shrines like Lourdes[LC17] ,
Says poeta doctus Graves[LC18] . Or of the cure
By poetry that cannot be coerced[LC19] ,

Say I, who realized at Epidaurus
That the whole place was a sanatorium
[LC20] With theatre and gymnasium and baths,

A site of incubation, where "incubation"
Was technical and ritual, meaning sleep
When epiphany occurred and you met the god[LC21]  ...

Hatless, groggy, shadowing myself
As the thurifer I was in an open air procession
In Lourdes in '56[LC22] 

When I nearly fainted from the heat and fumes,
Again I nearly fainted [LC23] as I bent
To pull a bunch of grass and hallucinated

Doctor Kerlin at the steamed-up glass
Of our scullery window, starting in to draw
With his large pink index finger dot-faced men

With button-spots in a straight line down their fronts
And women with dot breasts, giving them all
A set of droopy sausage-arms and legs

That soon began to run[LC24] . And then as he dipped and laved
In the generous suds again, miraculum[LC25] :
The baby bits all came together [LC26] swimming

Into his soapy big hygienic hands
And I myself came to[LC27] , blinded with sweat,
Blinking and shaky in the windless light.

III

Bits of the grass I pulled I posted off
To one going into chemotherapy
And one who had come through[LC28] . I didn't want

To leave the place or link up with the others[LC29] .
It was mid-day, mid-May, pre-tourist sunlight
In the precincts of the god,

The very site of the temple of Asclepius.
I wanted nothing more than to lie down
Under hogweed, under seeded grass

And to be visited in the very eye of the day[LC30] 
By Hygeia, his daughter[LC31] , her name still clarifying
The haven of light she was, the undarkening door.

IV

The room I came from and the rest of us all came from
Stays pure reality where I stand alone[LC32] ,
Standing the passage of time, and she's[LC33]  asleep

In sheets put on for the doctor, wedding presents[LC34] 
That showed up again and again, bridal
And usual and useful at births and deaths.

Me at the bedside, incubating for real[LC35] ,
Peering, appearing [LC36] to her as she closes
And opens her eyes, then lapses back

Into a faraway smile whose precinct [LC37] of vision
I would enter every time, to assist and be asked
In that hoarsened whisper of triumph,

"And what do you think
Of the new wee baby the doctor brought for us all
When I was asleep[LC38] ?"

---

 [EC1]Heaney was eldest of 9 children.  He is remembering (but giving the child’s perspective) the birth of his younger siblings.  The “child” imagines that the babies came out of the Doctor’s bag like the instruments. 

 [LC2]|Notice the use of euphemism – the child is not sure what is happening, the births are shrouded in mystery, “the room” (his parents’ bedroom) becomes a mysterious, sacred place – an “inner sanctum” as in a temple.

 [LC3]Highly sensual imagery. Internal rhyme focuses on the parts of the Doctor most relevant to his task.   “Nosy” suggests that his hands have been where they should not. He is washing up after the birth.

 [LC4]Follow the syntax – the bag is empty once the birth is over as he has used the instruments to deliver the baby. 

 [LC5]The child is fascinated.  The taking out of instruments (like the taking out of the child from the uterus) seems to happening in reverse as the instruments are put back in place in the bag

 [LC6]Look up a picture of a Gladstone bag.  “Ark” is not just Noah’s ark, but also a storage space for holy relics – as in “Ark of the Covenant”

 [LC7]Reference to Dutch Old Masters’ paintings – such as Vermeer.

 [LC8]Rain water lacks calcium so is softer and makes better lather

 [LC9]Greek for a people who lived “beyond the North Wind” – suggesting a mythical person.   

 [LC10]The child looks through (peep-holes) the Doctor’s eyes to imagine the room he works in, like some kind of Frankenstein laboratory where he creates babies out of parts.

 [LC11]The laboratory seems to be mixed up with the scullery in the child’s mind.  Probably hooks to hang meat/bacon.

 [LC12]Drips and seeps

 [LC13]hanging

 [LC14]Switches to present day.  Heaney now talking as the adult.

 [LC15]Poeta doctus is a title Heaney has given to the poet/writer Peter Levi.  It means a learned poet who refers to the classics. Levi wrote extensively on Greece

 [LC16]God of Healing

 [LC17]Our Lady of Lourdes is a major Catholic shrine visited by people seeking healing.

 [LC18]Robert Graves poet/writer who translated the Greek Myths

 [LC19]Heaney claims that poetry can cure ills

 [LC20]A place sick people were sent to get better

 [LC21]Epidaurus is a major Greek archaeological site in northern Greece and the town was dedicated to Asclepius.  Poetry is commonly held to be divinely inspired. This could be the “epiphany” or revelation that Heaney is referring to.  “incubation” is also a word used for the period between laying and hatching eggs – another reference to birth.

 [LC22]He is now recalling a visit to Lourdes in 1956 (also a site associated with healing) where he fainted from the “heat and fumes”.  A thurifer is an incense burner carried at religious processions

 [LC23]Back in Epidaurus he bends to pull up some grass and nearly faints – hallucinating for a moment that he sees Dr Kerlin again.

 [LC24]He imagines Dr Kerlin drawing the kind of picture of men and women that children do, in the steam on the scullery window

 [LC25]A miracle!

 [LC26]The pieces of baby that were previously imagined as hanging from hooks now “come together” as if by a miracle as the Doctor washes his hands, as if performing a religious ritual.

 [LC27]He recovers from his fainting fit

 [LC28]He sends off the bits of grass to people who are sick – as visitors to shrines would do in ancient times.

 [LC29]He wants to cut free from the tour group

 [LC30]midday

 [LC31]Hygeia, daughter of Asclepius, brings continued good health free of the shadow of death?

 [LC32]In spite of his adult perspective now, the childhood fantasy remains real to him.

 [LC33]His mother

 [LC34]Wedding present sheets were kept for “best” in many working class households as they were often higher quality than those bought for everyday use and therefore kept for special occasions, as they were irreplaceable.

 [LC35]Refers back to his vision at Epidaurus.  Either he is making this poem (Heaney looking back sees that this was the inspiration for the poem) or awaiting the revelation of where these babies really come from.

 [LC36]The child peers, and appears to his mother as she slips in and out of sleep.

 [LC37]Entrance place

 [LC38]The cat is not let out of the bag – the mother keeps her “secret” from the child, pretending that the Doctor did indeed bring the baby in his bag.