Please Hold

Question 1

potential angles to analyse this poem

Answer 1

critique of technology
poem about life

Question 2

This is the future, my wife says.

Answer 2

repetition - it is inevitable
end stop - finality, lack of choice/escape

Question 3

your future, here, she says.

Answer 3

end stop emphatic of the inescapability of modern life

Question 4

the robot is giving me countless options, none of which answer to my needs

Answer 4

extended metaphor for life

allusion of choice - we don’t actually have the freedom we think we have

Question 5

repetition of I give him

Answer 5

passive surrender to technology/modern life

Question 6

but I can find nothing to meet my needs

Answer 6

extended metaphor for the limitations of modern life

Question 7

I shout
I scream Agent!

Answer 7

exclamative - heightened emotion - anger and frustration with life

Question 8

and my wife says, this is the future

Answer 8

repetition - modern life is inescapable

Question 9

Please say yes or no…

Answer 9

suggests that there are alternative options however there is a limitation of choice - allusion of freedom

Question 10

am cut off

Answer 10

rejected when he ‘rebels’ by expressing his anger - suggests modern life is inescapable because there is no way to reject it

Question 11

giving me no options

Answer 11

he makes a realisation of the lack of alternatives in modern society - the rigidity of modern life

Question 12

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

Answer 12

the irony of the creative individual piece of expression becoming insignificant mass produced background music is emphatic of the mundane, rigid modern society

Question 13

and the robot transfers me to himself.

Answer 13

caesura emphatic of a lack of choice

Question 14

and my translator says

Answer 14

translator = his inner voice

Question 15

the only way you can now meet your needs is looting

Answer 15

symbol of conformity - the only way to escape modern life is to turn to criminality - emphatic of the extent of the lack of choice

Question 16

how does the speakers voice change in the final rhyming tercet

Answer 16

the inner voice is monosyllabic and repetitive -

Question 17

structure comments

Answer 17

only one stanza apart from his inner voice - represents the lack of options given to the man

his inner voice is separate - he can not grasp modern life