The Gift Shop Annotated

Pain can be as simple as a paper cut or a bleeding scar, but at the same time it is the monster that eats an individual up inside, keeping them up at night and asking them questions that they wish they only knew the answers to. It questions their every decision and thought similar to a nagging mother paired with an untidy room. There are multiple aspects of pain both physical and emotional that each has their own distinctive impacts on an individual’s life. The pain associated with the loss of someone significant is the worst of all; the feeling of emptiness in an individual’s hands when they try to hold onto them for a moment longer as they slip through their fingers is unlike any other. In Gift Shop – (For Gord), Shane Koyczan wants the reader …show more content…
The use of metaphors, similes, and personification in the text such as “we have worn you music like a stitch over an open vein like a cast” (9-11). The constant comparison of the narrator’s feelings of loss to physical pain shows that they want someone to understand their feelings. At the same time, the narrator is also creating a contrast to how the extent of physical and emotional pain is unsimillar and cannot be felt to the same degree, implying that the reader is unable to feel and connect to the poem in the same way the narrator is. The use of diction in the text also allows the reader to have a deeper understanding of what the narrator is trying to get across, “we brace for the scar we will inherit from your departure” (15). The poet uses the word “inherit” to indicate that the feelings of loss will live within an individual for the rest of their life. Another example of diction is “selfishly we flood into the gift shop” (17). The word “selfishly” tells the reader that the narrator is seeking closure and a sense of relief from the burden of loss. Finally, the poet has purposely excluded punctuation from the poem, this is known as enjambment and it speeds up the pace and rhythm of the poem. The lack of punctuations makes the poem seem like a very long run-on sentence which tells the …show more content…
My mother was sitting next to me on the phone as she began to cry, I had asked her what was wrong and she quickly told me to go upstairs. I sat in my room and I tried to think of what made her so upset, as I had only seen her cry once before. My curiosity led me back downstairs and once again I asked her what was wrong and she replied this time. She explained to me that two weeks ago my grandfather had suffered a major heart attack and my grandmother just underwent some blood test that came back positive for cancer. My heart became a beaten up ship being anchored down by the sharp feeling of pain as I recalled all of the joyful summer memories in Albania with my grandparents. I remembered our strolls on the beach, my grandmother’s rice pudding after a day out, and my grandfather’s lightheartedness that lit up the room. For the next two weeks I was torn to pieces as I tried to hold onto any and every memory I had as a cried myself to sleep, wondering if I’d ever get to see them and tell them that I loved them ever again. I can connect to the poem The Gift Shop – (For Gord) and the feelings of loss that the narrator is experiencing as I am currently going through a very similar situation. I have the same need to salvage every memory that I can and to prepare myself for the emotional pain associated with losing someone significant in an individual’s