Dream of a Lost Friend - Duffy

Nota:

• The speaker is reluctant to accept their friend's fate.

Nota:

• Conveys their desperation. They're in need of assistance.

Nota:

• The colour white connotes purity, hope, brightness and innocence. But in this sense it's in relation to illness, they're like a ghost. It tells us the person is dying.

Nota:

• Suggests the urgency of the person. They aren't ready and dont' want to die.

Nota:

• A corridor can't harbour pain, so it's a metaphor. It's probably a hospital corridor. The quote conveys how much suffering has occured there.
• "harboured" usuallt means keeping something safe and protecting it. This contrasts with "fierce pain".

Nota:

• "frenzied" portrays the desperation and fear. They're praying to Chemistry - they're hoping for a cure or treatment that works.

Nota:

• "hysterical" suggests them being either very upset or being deranged. Alternatively they might laugh over-enthusiastically.
• "out of your skull" is ambiguous. It bears similarity to the phrase 'out of your mind'. So, it's possible the patient was going mad. Subsurdising 'mind' with "skull' implies a loss of self/lack of personality and it symbolises/foreshadows the loss of life.
• "skull" obviously connotes skeletons and therefore dead bodies/death in general.

Nota:

• The description of his laugh descends, becoming more negative with each description.
• This could symbolise decay and the change from health to illness, and then to death.

Nota:

• The speaker can't separate reality from fiction.

Nota:

• Like an outer-body experience.

Nota:

• Look after and care for the virus. He fed it by having unsafe sex. His body's looking after the virus until it kills him.

Nota:

• Their friend can onlt be met in thought not in reality as they have passed away.

Nota:

• These show that conjuring up their memories is difficult and painful.

Nota:

• The speaker might be trying to encourage their friend here.

Nota:

• This is an incomplete cliché because there is no hope. The ellipsis replaces hope. The friend will certainly die.

Nota:

• This reinforces that the friend is deceased. "long" implies they've been dead for some time.

Nota:

• The friend is behaving as if they are well and happy. But this is a lie, they're putting on a brave face.