1. In the Snack Bar
Edwin Morgan

2. The Title
‘Snack Bar’ – familiar setting from everyday life ~ not what we would usually associate with poetry
As with ‘Good Friday’ and ‘Trio’:
Realistic details
Present tense – sense of immediacy

3. Themes / central concerns
Old age
Empathy (an understanding of how other people feel)
Adversity (difficulties) / overcoming adversity

4. Form Free verse Stanzas of different lengths
Lines of different lengths
No regular rhythm
No regular rhyme scheme

5. Symbolism
The old man’s climb up the stairs symbolises all of humanity’s struggle against adversity (difficulties)
The old man is an archetype:
His weaknesses and disabilities represent human frailty (weakness) that could apply to any person living
2019/2/23

6. Stanza 1 Lines 1-6 A cup capsizes along the formica,
attracts the author’s attention; uses hard sounds ‘c’: emphasises the noise
Only a few turn their heads because a) it is a crowded noisy place b) The people don’t know or care what it is
Word order reversed to emphasise slowness / difficulty of motions.
Hyperbole – implies weakness and physical incapacity
A cup capsizes along the formica,
slithering with a dull clatter.
A few heads turn in the crowded evening snack-bar.
An old man is trying to get to his feet
from the low round stool fixed to the floor.
Slowly he levers himself up, his hands have no power.

7. He is up as far as he can get. The dismal hump
Stanza 1 - Lines 7-10
The hump cannot be dismal. The man is depressed and sad (transferred epithet)
Threatening appearance; suggests oppression / menace
Poor and shabbily dressed. Homeless?
Simile. Trapped in wretched, deformed body; grotesque; cannot escape – negative view of disability?
He is up as far as he can get. The dismal hump
looming over him forces his head down.
He stands in his stained beltless gaberdine
like a monstrous animal caught in a tent

8. Stanza 1 - Lines 11-17 in some story. He sways slightly, Drunk? Ill?
the face not seen, bent down
in shadow under his cap.
Even on his feet he is staring at the floor
or would be, if he could see.
I notice now his stick, once painted white
but scuffed and muddy, hanging from his right arm.
Drunk? Ill?
No face - sense of mystery
Evokes sympathy from reader. Attitude to the old man changes -- we learn reason for his appearance (he’s blind).
Scruffy appearance of stick makes man a more pitiful figure
Revisits idea that he is physically weak

9. Stanza 1 - Lines 18-22
Long blind, hunchback born, half paralysed he stands fumbling with the stick and speaks: ‘I want – to go to the – toilet.’
Long alliterative line – many ‘b’ sounds – this, along with 3 misfortunes (blind / hunchback / paralysed) = dramatic. Emotional impact on reader. Horror / sympathy.
Short line – builds up to action. Appears heroic / admirable.
Difficulty of everyday life
Short line – tension
Commonplace, yet for him a great challenge. Dashes emphasise difficulty of speaking and of moving

10. Stanza 2 - Lines 23-25
It is down two flights of stairs, but we go. I take his arm. ‘Give me – your arm – it’s better,’ he says. Inch by inch we drift towards the stairs.
Old man wants to take narrator's arm (rather other way round)
allows the old man to have some control / independence
hyperbole - emphasises slowness of movement
Suggests a lack of direction

11. Stanza 2 - Lines 26-32 Simile. Floor is busy / difficult to cross
A few yards of floor are like a landscape to be negotiated, in the slow setting out time has almost stopped. I concentrate my life to his: crunch of spilt sugar, slidy puddle from the night’s umbrellas, table edges, people’s feet, hiss of the coffee-machine, voices and laughter,
Simile. Floor is busy / difficult to cross
Emphatic position (end of line) -- enjambment (to next line) -- trying to imagine what it is like for the old man
Lists hazards
Imagines old man's senses - touch and hearing (no sight!)

12. Stanza 2 - Lines 33-34 More senses - smell
smell of a cigar, hamburgers, wet coats steaming, and the slow dangerous inches to the stairs.
More senses - smell

13. Stanza 2 - Lines 35-38
I put his right hand on the rail and take his stick. He clings to me. The stick is in his left hand, probing the treads. I guide his arm and tell him the steps.
Long line two caesuras (pauses) - emphasises slowness and hesitancy of old man's movements
'Clings' suggests dependency or fear
The narrator = now surprisingly gentle / helpful with old man

14. Stanza 2 - Lines 39-43
And slowly we go down. And slowly we go down. White tiles and mirrors at last. He shambles uncouth into the clinical gleam. I set him in position, stand behind him and wait with his stick.
Repetition: emphasises slowness and repetitive motion.
Contrast - 'uncouth/shambling' with 'clinical' toilets. Old man is out of place.
Old man needs constant help, even to urinate. Narrator wants to give him some privacy.

15. Stanza 2 - Lines 44-48
His brooding reflection darkens the mirror but the trickle of his water is thin and slow, an old man’s apology for living. Painful ages to close his trousers and coat – I do up the last buttons for him.
Age, as well as disability, makes the old man's life harder
Metaphor - thin 'trickle of his water' is an apology. Narrator feels great distress at the old man's situation
Hyperbole

16. Stanza 2 - Lines 49-56
He asks doubtfully, ‘Can I – wash my hands?’ I fill the basin, clasp his soft fingers round the soap. He washes, feebly, patiently. There is no towel. I press the pedal of the drier, draw his hands gently into the roar of the hot air. But he cannot rub them together, drags out a handkerchief to finish. He is glad to leave the contraption, and face the stairs.
Normally soap is softer than hands but not in this case -- a surprise considering his appearance?
Suggests monsters / something threatening. Old man is uncomfortable with the dryer
More realistic detail - narrator relives the moment

17. Stanza 2 - Lines 57-62 Repetition reveals the slowness of the motion
He climbs, and steadily enough. He climbs, we climb. He climbs with many pauses but with that one persisting patience of the undefeated which is the nature of man when all is said. And slowly we go up. And slowly we go up.
Repetition reveals the slowness of the motion
Alliterative plosive (p) sounds - underline how determined the old man is.
The old man's climb up the stairs becomes an uplifting symbol of human resilience -- sudden change in the tone of the poem - now hopeful and life-affirming.
More repetition - old man's task is huge

18. Stanza 2 - Lines 63-67
The faltering, unfaltering steps take him at last to the door across that endless, yet not endless waste of floor. I watch him helped on a bus. It shudders off in the rain. The conductor bends to hear where he wants to go.
Oxymoron - steps cannot be both faltering and unfaltering. Contradiction: old man is at the same time weak (physically) and strong (mentally).
Another oxymoronic statement - the floor is endless to the old man, but not to the narrator.
Realistic detail - sound and movement of bus.
Even the weather is against the old man

19. Stanza 3 - Lines 68-72
Wherever he could go it would be dark and yet he must trust men. Without embarrassment or shame he must announce his most pitiful needs in a public place. No one sees his face.
Can be taken metaphorically or literally – blind, therefore it’s dark. Also – dark = unknown / frightening
Basic human needs; private things that must be done with aid.
Suggests either:
no one can see his face because of hunchback
Or: people cannot see beyond his disabilities to his personality
2019/2/23

20. Stanza 3 - Lines 73-77
Does he know how frightening he is in his strangeness under his mountainous coat, his hands like wet leaves stuck to the half-white stick? His life depends on many who would evade him.
Rhetorical question – narrator reflects on how the old man thinks of himself
Simile. Returns to idea of old man as grotesque figure
Alliteration – emphasises idea that stick is almost a part of him
People avoid him out of
*guilt*?
*laziness*?
*refusal to see the world as it is*?
2019/2/23

21. Stanza 3 - Lines 10-13
But he cannot reckon up the chances, having one thing to do, to haul his blind hump through these rains of August. Dear Christ, to be born for this!
Alliteration – enormity of the task he faces (everyday life)
Glasgow weather – sounds almost biblical
Sympathetic plea. Comparison between Christ (suffering) and old man
Dramatic exclamation to end poem
2019/2/23