Diction In The Waiting Room

At seven years old, a person is quite young and has much still to discover and experience in her life. A child of such an age might soon be guided to explore the realms of math and science, social studies and literature. She could also begin noticing patterns in, and questioning, the world around her, perhaps reflecting on the arbitrarity of existence and identity (as every seven-year-old does). This growing understanding is an essential companion to physical growth as a child matures beyond adolescence, yet if too abrupt, unfamiliar, or undesired, these moments of awareness may be overwhelming and unsettling. This particular idea is excellently captured in Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “In the Waiting Room” through her use of ominous diction and
A perfect example of this is when she plainly states, “It was winter. It got dark / early” (6-7). The use of adjectives such as “winter” and “dark” do not establish a lively, optimistic setting, but rather begin the poem in a more negative way. They give the reader a sense of gloom that already begins to hint at the escalating unfavorability of later events, without being too descriptive and complicated in way that violates the concept of the persona being a young and yet-uneducated girl. Bishop later describes her emotional crisis as a feeling of being flung off of the Earth “into cold, blue-black space” (58). This entire phrase, although still childishly simple in its vocabulary, powerfully conveys the sense of desolation and despair that accompanied Elizabeth’s revelations by portraying this frigid, unlit environment. She manages with these words to produce a scene of emotional growth that unexpectedly transmits a very negative feeling. One final example of this practice in the piece is used to describe the narrator’s gradual return to reality: “The waiting room [. . .] was sliding / beneath a big black wave” (90-92). The specific phrase “beneath a big black wave” prompts the visualization of a monstrous darkness that threatened to swallow young Bishop, which further advances the very-present unease that permeated this event. Blackness, especially,
For example, when explaining what she observed in the National Geographic, she separately describes both babies’ heads and women’s necks as “wound round and round” with string and wire, respectively (26-29). The choice to use this same phrase twice draws attention to this scene and to how these images of very unfamiliar people, whose features seemed very new and grotesque, stuck in Elizabeth's mind and troubled her. It force the reader to dwell on this image, as Elizabeth herself did. Further in the poem, she uses the phrase “I- we- were falling, falling” (50) to explain how her experience of realizing the similarities between people and seeing herself in her aunt felt so unsettling and endless. The duplication of the word “falling” makes Elizabeth's disorientation more impactful and prolongs the action. She establishes that this discomfort was no brief phenomenon, but rather one more drawn-out and unceasing that she and the reader must endure. In reflecting on this experience as a whole, Bishop notes “that nothing stranger / had ever happened, that nothing / stranger could ever happen” (72-74). This repetition shows how the event of recognition and emotional development was very frightening to the narrator, stressing how unique and significant it was by ensuring that the reader recognizes how abnormal and “strange” Elizabeth found the