Hotel Room 12th Floor

Question 1

Helicopter skirting like a damaged insect

Answer 1

Suggests that the helicopter is small compared to the buildings and the idea that the modern invention is an inferior copy of nature

Question 2

Jumbo sized dentist drill

Answer 2

Suggests that the size of the building is pointless and has connotations of pain and suffering

Question 3

midnight has come in from foreign places

Answer 3

Suggests the darkness and unknown and consequently, fear and that America is in conflict with anything that is foreign or doesn’t tie in with their view

Question 4

uncivilised darkness

Answer 4

Suggests conflict and that the buildings of the city are in battle with the surrounding darkness

Question 5

between a radio and a television set

Answer 5

Suggests that McCaig is attempting to drown out the sounds of violence from the city outside

Question 6

Wildest of warwhoops

Answer 6

Suggests an uncivilised perhaps brutal culture

Question 7

Police cars and ambulances racing

Answer 7

Suggests that police cars and ambulances racing to deal with the results of violence

Question 8

blood glazed on sidewalks

Answer 8

Suggests that People are reduced to damaged body parts, noises, spilled fluids implying that the place of humans in this society has been lost.

Question 9

frontier is never somewhere else

Answer 9

Suggests that what we see as uncivilised is always with us and uncivilised acts are linked to all human societies