Hotel Room 12th Floor annotations

Question 1

Hotel Room - 12th Floor (title)

Answer 1

Far from home, high up, disconnected from people

Question 2

This morning I watched from here

Answer 2

• Specific time/place makes it feel like a real experience
• ‘watched’: disconnection from people

Question 3

a helicopter

Answer 3

Suggests power/status and disconnection from people (like speaker)

Question 4

like a damaged insect

Answer 4

• Connotations: decaying, nasty, ‘damaged’ makes it worse
• Buzzing and annoying, small and insignificant
• Inferior copy of nature

Question 5

that jumbo size dentist’s drill

Answer 5

• American connotations, humorous, criticises bigger is better mentality
• Connotations of pain and a tool to fight decay

Question 6

landing on the roof of the PanAm skyscraper.

Answer 6

Wealthy symbol landed on by ‘insect’, like dung

Question 7

But now midnight has come in from foreign places.

Answer 7

• Turning point from light to dark
• The darkness is uninvited
• Modern American conflict with anything ‘foreign’

Question 8

Its uncivilised darkness

Answer 8

Explored the side of human nature that arises when accomplishments are removed

Question 9

is shot at

Answer 9

USA & guns, constant battle with destructive desires

Question 10

by a million lit windows, all ups and acrosses

Answer 10

• Light, connotations of progress/knowledge
• Cross, religious connotations, good vs evil

Question 11

But midnight is not so easily defeated.

Answer 11

• Repetition of ‘but’, the darkness has won
• ‘not’ emphasises negativity

Question 12

I lie in bed, between a radio and a television set,

Answer 12

• In New York but never leaves his room (disconnection)
• ‘between’: he is trapped/surrounded by technology
• Technology, lifeless objects

Question 13

and hear the wildest of warwhoops continually ululating

Answer 13

• ‘hear’, like watched but he cannot see, darkness and fear
• Alliteration, warwhoops of Native Americans (60s idea of “brutality” from westerns)
• Onomatopoeia (‘ululating’), warwhoops and sirens

Question 14

the glittering canyons

Answer 14

Skyscrapers - ‘glittering’ cannot disguise their true nature

Question 15

to the broken bones,

Answer 15

• Synecdoche, people reduced to their injuries, dehumanising
• Repetition of ‘the’, impersonal, could be anyone

Question 16

the harsh screaming from coldwater flats,

Answer 16

• Tautology, ‘harsh’ emphasises the screaming
• Literal flats with no hot water, shows wealth disparity, people have been left behind by materialism

Question 17

the blood glazed on sidewalks.

Answer 17

So much blood the sidewalk is shining (like the skyscrapers)

Question 18

The frontier is never somewhere else. And no stockades can keep the midnight out.

Answer 18

• Extended Wild West metaphor
• Repeated negatives emphasise bleakness
• Pessimistic tone, concludes there is no disguise to humanity’s violent nature