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Analysis Essay
Hotel insomnia is a poem by Charles Simic, with the speaker being in first person. The speaker narrates the experiences of living in a dark lit room while suffering insomnia and has to hear everything happening around through all night. This is depicted by the title, “Hotel Insomnia. The title acts as a symbolization of what the poem is about, a person who is suffering from insomnia and his experiences in the night until morning. The author has to listen to many things, starting with an old crippled man playing a piano next door, to a gypsy fortuneteller walking bare feet and the sobbing of a child. He is mostly in the dark, which suggests it is at night, and there is hardly any light. The poem utilizes metaphors and imagery to create vivid pictures of the description provided by the speaker.
To start with, the speaker is in a hotel room, where one only checks in and out. It is not a permanent place to stay. The room is described as one that is dark; dirty, without any features that qualifies it as a hole as the speaker calls it. Despite its condition, the speaker liked the little hole, which further means he is no longer there since it is in the past tense, but is thinking or recalling about the room. However, the next lines in the fist stanza make it look as though it was not a hotel room. With a description of a hotel room the next door, the speaker has probably lived there long considering he has heard an old crippled man come to play it few evenings every month. Describing the piano player as a crippled man while we understand that the windows faces a brick wall suggests he probably heard the old man singing. This is suggested by the lyrics, “My Blue Heaven”. He probably hears the old man walk with his clutches, which makes him realize he is a cripple. The lyric of the song he plays suggests that the hole is the blue sky considering the speaker cannot see the sky. This can presumably mean that the hole acts as the blue sky to the speaker since he cannot see the real sky.
On the other hand, the second stanza suggests that the singing was not usual considering it describes the place as a quite one with people living alone. He then introduces spiders living within the rooms, which means the rooms were rarely cleaned. The overcoat adds to the imagery, creating a picture of a frail person probably in heavy oversized clothes hanging on them rather than fitting. This means that each room lived people in this conditions that indicate poor worn out people. Additionally, the spider catching their flies with a web of cigarette smoke and revery could mean that the speaker was so occupied with his thought that he did not take notice of the reality surrounding him. On the other hand, he might have excluded all else from his life, just as a spider is preoccupied to catch its fly, so he enjoys his sleeplessness. However, this time he was smoking in the night trying to catch the fly in his imagination, which is depicted by the word revery.
The third stanza talks about the speaker being awake at five in the morning, which is quite early. It means that it must have been very quiet since he could hear the sound of bare feet in the room upstairs of the gypsy fortuneteller going to “pee” after a night of lovemaking. This suggests that the speaker knew the neighbors, which means he had also seen the crippled man. He also knew that the woman made love probably by hearing them. More so, the speaker says that the fortuneteller owns a store at the corner. This suggests that the place was not a hotel, since she must have been living there at the time the speaker was living there. This is further highlighted by the fact that he knew the neighbors or people living in the other rooms. The stanza also tells about a sobbing child, which means there were probably families living there to suggest it is not a hotel. He is so empathetic about others that he feels like he is sobbing, as well. The gypsy fortuneteller can serve to illustrate the love Simic had for his insomnia. At 5a.m in the morning, he is awake when the new day is starting, and he has to say goodbye to his insomnia. He associates his insomnia to love making. He finds pleasure in catching flies in the dark, listening to music of the night and at the end another part of him is revealed, where he is sympathetic to the sobbing child.
The poem tells little about the narrator, and title does not give a direct meaning of the poem. Rather, it tries to suggest the experiences of a person suffering from insomnia. From this narration, the speaker is alone and alert as well as awake. Despite being a night, we do not see any suggestion that he slept. Rather, he was alert to all the events of the night, staring with the old man playing piano, the sound of bare feet and a sobbing child. More so, knowing that the woman was making love means he could hear the sounds further meaning he was awake.
The poem is set in a dark room that the speaker provides good description with each sentence expressing a thought on its own. For instance, the first line makes sense on its own, where he says, “I liked my little hole.” This describes the room size and its other characters such as darkness as a hole would be. With its window facing the brick wall means it is blocked from the light as well as the surrounding area. This serves to show how the speaker is trapped inside a little room without any light coming in. probably suggesting his state of mind.
The speaker makes good use of imagery to describe the room where he says, “each room with its spider in heavy overcoat catching his fly with a web of cigarette smoke and reverie” this creates a picture of the person inside the room smoking. The speaker uses metaphor as well such as in the first line where he says he liked his hole. In this case, the hole was his room. The purpose of using the word hole was to highlight the characteristics of the room. A hole is supposed to be dark and dirty, just as the room is described. The word hole reinforces the shabby atmosphere as well as poverty depicted by the window of the room, which offered a poor vista, in this case the brick wall. Additionally, this is seen in the spider, which describes him since a spider could not smoke or put on a heavy overcoat. This adds to the meaning of the poem, describing the experiences of a night from the perspective of a person suffering from insomnia. Although there is nothing much told about the speaker, we can visualize his experiences where he is talking directly to us. This manages to put the reader of the poem in the shoes of a person suffering insomnia.
The poem does not have any rhymes and any specific sound effect. Additionally, it does not follow any form such as a sonnet and hardly any metrics. It uses plain language, which is quite simple and direct too. However, the language is quite vivid with a lot of imagery and metaphors. Additionally, the author utilizes enjambment at the last closing lines on the child sobbing, in the two long sentences that flow in the “My Blue Heaven” and about the spider and a web of smoke. At these lines, the poem breaks from the short lines that are independent and allows the meaning to flow from one sentence to the next continuously without breaking from one line to the next.
In this poem, the speaker identifies with what surrounds him in every way possible. He enjoys the music of the night, listens to the bare footsteps and hears a child cry. His insomnia has made him quite conscious of what is around him, and manages to associate with it to a point of loving a place that one would not consider lovable. With all the negative aspects of the place, he liked it since he could associate with what surrounded him. Although one may find insomnia to be a negative condition, the speaker takes it positively and enjoys the surrounding in all ways he can in his quiet room.
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