Nathan Hoyle Professor Brandt English 29 October 2012

In the Waiting Room

In the Waiting Room, Elizabeth Bishop writes in an adults perspective of herself as a child. Bishop writes this small poem in an adults perspective of herself as a child to get the deep thoughts she had as a child across to the reader. In the waiting room is the realization of Elizabeth Bishop as a seven year old child that she is just like every other human being in the waiting room. In this poem, people are brought together by recognition of each other's pain. We all have sat in dentist office asking ourselves questions that lead to more. Elizabeth Bishop was an only child from Worcester, Massachusetts. In her early childhood she was adopted by her grandparents that lived in Great Village, Nova Scotia. This move happened because her father had passed away when she was only eight months old and her mother was institutionalized for being mentally ill. Later in Bishop's childhood she was removed from the care of her grandparents and moved back to Worcester, Massachusetts with her fathers wealthy family. Bishop did not agree with the move since she was having major separation problems being away from her grandparents. Her time in Worcester is when this poem takes place. Elizabeth Bishop being an orphan is the reason this intelligent little girl realizes at such a young age who she really is. Elizabeth is left not knowing who she is because her parents have both passed. She is searching for that one person to look up to and that one person she is most like. In this poem she chooses Aunt Consuelo to be that one person. It would make most sense if Aunt Consuelo was her mothers sister since Elizabeth sees herself as her. There is great symbolism throughout this poem. It is an interesting moment when Aunt Consuelo cries out. She says the word "oh!," which has no semantic content. This means that the word has no inherent meaning in the poem, it is just a signal for pain. This "oh!" is the immediate catalyst for Elizabeth's deep thoughts. It's the point at which she begins to try to make sense of her relationships with other people. The word 'black' is written in this poem four different times. Blackness is a sign of otherness in the poem, which means that it is used to describe people and things that are unknown to and different from Elizabeth. For Elizabeth, the unknown and different are a little scary and sometimes even horrifying. She equals black people with black things such as volcanoes and waves in the poem that scare her. Elizabeth is both drawn to and repelled by the black people in the poem, people whom she's probably not had been exposed to in her life before. If she kept expressing these same views as an adult, we probably would assume Elizabeth is racist. The last piece of symbolism is the naked women. Elizabeth has a very strong reaction to the naked black women that she skims over in National Geographic. She says that she is horrified by them but at the same time she can't look away from them. There are multiple things that could be the thought process of Elizabeth at this moment in the poem. First, she could be scared by the simple fact of their difference from herself that they are older, they are of a different race, and they are naked. Second, she could see herself in them, despite their differences. Maybe she's worried about the changes that her body will undergo as she matures, maybe she's worried about developing breasts. Third, she could be attracted to the women, not in a sexual way, but possibly in a curiosity way. This kind of attraction might frighten her. Bishop is known for her finely tuned and precise poems. In a Bishop's poem, every word matters. She is a master of detailed description. She does not just tell us that she is reading National Geographic, she tells us the date of the issue. She does not just talk about the knees of the patients in the waiting room, she tells us about their "shadowy gray knees." Outer space isn't black, it's "blue-black." Elizabeth is an expert on how to create a world in her poems. In the Waiting Room is about how growing up can be scary sometimes. When you are just a kid, strange noises at the dentist's office are scary and naked people in magazines are scary. In the Waiting Room, in some ways, is about how scary it is to not understand the world around you. In other ways, though, it's about how the world becomes even scarier once you do begin to understand it.