1. Set Text Revision ‘Visiting Hour’ and ‘Basking Shark’
By Norman McCaig

2. Questions
How do the opening lines act as an introduction to Visiting Hour?

3. as they go bobbing along green and yellow corridors
Highlights a smell familiar to us all. Can relate to smell which represents idiosyncratic (individual) atmosphere of a hospital.
Metaphor – the smell is so overpowering that is becomes a comb, touching every strands of his senses.
“bobbing” shows speaker’s feelings of not being “there”. Creates impression of boats on waves and suggests feelings of helplessness; he is being carried along.
The hospital smell
combs my nostrils
as they go bobbing along
green and yellow corridors
Synedoche – since not just his nostrils are moving along, as the image would suggest. This emphasises the overpowering nature of “the hospital smell”, since it has blocked out his other senses. Smell is overpowering and shows the vivid memory of the hospital.
The colour of pus/vomit stressing the unpleasantness of the situation.
Speaker perhaps unwilling to give into reality of situation. Use of colours which we associate with hospitals (+smell) reinforces reality of situation.

4. Questions
How do the opening lines act as an introduction to Basking Shark?

5. To stub an oar on a rock where none should be,
Infinitive verbs
Captures attention
Unusual term to use for an oar, you stub your toe. This suggests tripping over something, which highlights a theme of the poem, the idea that this is the shark’s territory, not the human who belongs on land.
Stanza One
Set at sea
Metaphor comparing the shark to a rock – bulky/solid without feeling or intelligence
Shark is in charge
To stub an oar on a rock where none should be,
To have it rise with a slounge out of the sea
Is a thing that happened once (too often) to me.
Slounge – onomatopoeia – noise of waves, clumsy movement
Although the poet is frightened he tries to inject humour to make light of the situation

6. Poem
Poem 1 Poem 2
Poem 3 Poem 4
Central Concern of the text (this means the message).
Themes
Feelings
Imagery (are there any similar images)
Tone / Mood
Word Choice (similar ideas, made up words)
Structure
Turning Point
Any other things

7. Comparing Questions How does the poet feel?
What is the turning point of the poem?
How is the setting shown?

8. Visiting hour Basking Shark Central Concern of the text
Visiting hour
Basking Shark
Central Concern of the text
Facing up to mortality
Who is the monster?
Themes (1)
Anger – that he can do nothing in the face of death
Nature - Rise with a slounge out of the sea.
Existence
Himself
Themes (2)
 Facing Reality –
Understanding the impact of death and loss and that we as a species are not immortal.
Facing Reality –
Understanding that we as a species are the ones who cause the most death and destruction. That we are not the masters of evolution.
Imagery (1)
Decay
A withered hand trembles on its stalk
Tone / Mood
 Reflection
Reflection
Serious with humour
Word Choice (1)
Striking words
“Guzzling”
shoggled
Word Choice (2)
Structure (1)
Turning point - Ward 7
Turning Point - Moves from observation to reflection

9. The 8 Mark Question Example:
MacCaig is a highly emotive poet. With close textual reference, show how the poet’s emotions are made clear in the language and / or ideas of this poem and at least one other MacCaig poem which you have studied.
Technique:
Bullet point your answers.
Try to discuss both the similarities and the differences in his poems.
Choose a quotation and analyse is from the extract given. Do this twice.
Choose a quotation and analyse it from outwith the extract given. Do this once.
Choose a quotation and analyse it from at least one other of MacCaig’s poems. I recommend focussing on two. Do this three times.

10. Example answer using the first stanza as the extract given in the exam
Example answer using the first stanza as the extract given in the exam. This answer would achieve full marks easily.
In both Memorial and Visiting Hour the poet’s sadness is clear.
Memorial is a lament for the dead and therefore in its very nature it is sad. Its themes deal with the sense of loss that pervades every aspect of his life.
Memorial - “Everywhere she dies. Everywhere” is repeated to reinforce the suffocating sense of loss felt. In the same line: “Everywhere I go she dies.” “I go” helps us to understand that the poet cannot escape awareness of the death of his loved one. These statements are simple, direct and matter of fact. Which reflect how brutal the realisation of his loss has been for him. The juxtaposition of the “I” and the “she” immediately informs us of the bond between the speaker and the subject of the poem. He is clearly devastated by this death.
Memorial - MacCaig finishes the stanza on a deeply pessimistic note reflecting his sadness. His use of a rhetorical question (asking how his hand can “clasp another's” when death separates them) shows how lost he is. He is left alone and questioning. Death is described as that “intolerable distance” he seems unable to cope with the loneliness.
Memorial - The final simple line of the poem sums up his sadness: “I am her sad music.” This hopelessly pessimistic note again emphasises the ceaseless, all-encompassing nature of the grief and sorrow that consume him and pervade every aspect of his consciousness.
Visiting Hour – The speaker visits someone dying. He tries to maintain his composure in order to prevent transmitting his worry and fear to the person he is visiting. The poet is not only in a sad circumstance but feels sad for those who have to work surrounded by death. The parallel structure of “so much pain, so/many deaths” and “so many farewells” emphasises the emotional strain of the nurses’ job. This, like the word choice, helps us to understand the speaker’s incredulity at the way the nurses are able to function so efficiently when surrounded by so much pain and suffering.
Visiting Hour - The patient’s hand seems fragile, MacCaig’s word choice detailing how it is “withered” and “trembles” shows his pain at watching someone so weak. By comparing her body to a dying flower he conveys how brittle and frail she is now, as well as hinting at her past vitality.
Visiting Hour - The final image of the books and the oxymoronic “fruitless fruits”, stand as reminders of the proximity of death. Just as the speaker attaches negative connotations to the patient in the lift and the needle in the patient’s arm, so he recognises the pointlessness of the gifts left for the patient. He feels helpless and the inevitability of death is recognised.
In both poems the poet is surrounded by death and is overcome by sadness.