Analytical Essay_AP English Language 5

In purpose of demonstrating the cold attitudes of nurses toward taking care of newborn babies, Annie Dillard conducts the readers to an obstetrical ward with formal diction in addition to a negative tone in a third person narrative and omniscient view. In an attempt to emphasize the cold environment of the obstetrical ward, the author uses several literary devices in combination with figurative language.

           Dillard mainly relies on visual imagery to portray the exact and picture-like atmosphere of the ward. She describes the structure of the room from the location of counter to the heat lamp overhead, and properly orders the process of washing a newborn baby. Also, Dillard uses color reference to effectively deliver the appearance of the baby. She repeatedly mentions the color red to express the blood and passion of the baby meeting the new world for the first time, pleased and calm to study the surroundings as if enchanted. Dillard even uses the color changes in a spectrum to deliver the color changes in the babies’ faces.

           In an effort to express how the nurses work automatically and formally, a lot of vocabularies used in factories appear in the text. The nurses seem to treat babies like products from factories. In line 4, it states that nurses wash the newborns like dishes in the sink. Other word choices such as “bundle” in line 11, “plastic ID bracelet” in line 18, and “Thermos” in line 35 reflect the blunt manners of nurses towards the babies. The attitudes of nurses are more minutely shown in a paragraph from line 29 to line 36. Dillard indicates the actions the nurses take with informative and simple sentences throughout the paragraph.

           Another noticeable thing to find out is the cold and indifferent emotions of nurses. Dillard uses an irony in line 12 to contradict the warm voice and unsmiling face of a nurse toward a newborn baby. She rather seems very bored and tired of repeated work, of which she spends most of an eight-hour shift standing at the sink, so this contributes to her automatic and involuntary tasks. Irrelevant part, from line 44 to line 47, appears to contradict the way the Americans put infants in a basinet cart, whether on their backs or their stomachs, in order to show express the sheer boredom of nurses.