An even worse way to go - Pugh

Annotations:

• Metaphor as death can't move. The man cab't do anything else in his condition but wait for death.
• 'near' suggests that death is there already, just a little way off.
• It's ironic that death will come near him but no one else will - not his sexual partners or his nurses/doctors.

Annotations:

• 'mercy' = kind people who are trying to treat him still think negatively of him.
• 'masked' = literal meaning is hospital attire. Could be a link to the beak-shaped masks worn by plague doctors to protect them from the infected.
• People being masked portrays the idea of distance between the patient and those around him. An emotional mask creates an emotional distance between people, while a physical mask creates physical distance.

Annotations:

• People don't want to be close to him. There's a separation between him and the healthy.

Annotations:

• The question tells us no one wants to be close to him now. His sleeping around left him alone.
• Sibilance of the 's' in "share" and "sheets". Conveys his bitterness or creates a sad and solitary tone.

Annotations:

• He looks ill - like death/disease as a person. He's emaciated.

Annotations:

• Link to the plague supports  earlier analysis of "mercy's face is masked".
• Maybe Pugh is implying that AIDS is like a new plague. Or at least that AIDS is as terifying as the plague or that the character looks so ill as if he was a sufferer of the plague.

Annotations:

• "vast" = adjective. Implies the distance bewteen the AIDS sufferer and other people.
• "black hole" = semantic field of astronomy. Black hole is a vaccum which you can't escape (like he can't escape death). He feels engulfed/swallowed up by solitude. Black hole could also be symbolic of his grave that he's being sucked into.

Annotations:

• By avoiding sleeping alone he's actually shortened his time alive and brought the eternity of aloneless nearer.
• It ends the poem to increase the feeling of finality.

Annotations:

• The hard alliteration fo the 'c' sound in "casual" and "contacts" hints at Pugh's attitude towards the character's promiscuity.
• "brief" makes the reader feel sad for the character and is slightly more sympathtic on Pugh's part. However, it's still a harsher word than 'fleeting' for instance.
• "warmth" appeals to the sense of touch. The persona needed human contact to live.

Annotations:

• These word choices all indicate the limited lengths of intimacy he was able to achieve.

Annotations:

• "way to go" is a euphanism for dying.
• "worse" = adjective. Tells the reader his death is a bad one.
• The poem then goes on to explain he dies in pain and alone.