IV QUARANTINEBy: Eavan Boland

Slideshow and analysis: Willow Fantino and Ryleigh Cameron

Color code Purple=“w” words Blue=negative words Red=directional words Pink=love words and relationship words

Vocabulary and Historical references

Quarantine: n. a strict isolation imposed to stop the spread of disease. (Title)

Threshold: n. the point at which a stimulus is of sufficient intensity to begin to produce an effect (line 13)

Inventory: v. to summarize (line 16) Workhouse: a place set up in the 1830’s in Ireland for people

that could no longer afford to live could go and live because no one would take them in and they had no where else to go. Quickly these filled up and people had to travel from town to town in search of one. (line 3)

Famine Fever: cholera, dysentery, scurvy, typhus, and infestations of lice caused by the rotten potatoes the people were eating in 1847. (line 5)

Winter of 1847: historical reference to the famine in Ireland during 1847 that devastated many people and the government refused to do anything although aware of the situation. (line 17)

In the worst hour of the worst seasonOf the worst year of a whole people

A man set out from the workhouse with his wife.He was walking –they were both walking- north.

She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up.

He lifted her and put her on his back.He walked like that west and west and north.Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.

In the morning they were both found dead. Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole

history.But her feet were held against his breastbone.The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her.

Let no love poem ever come to this threshold.There is no place here for the inexact

praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body.There is only time for this merciless inventory:

Their death together in the winter of 1847.Also what they suffered. How they lived.

And what there is between a man and a woman.And in which darkness it can best be proved.

Inarguables Context: one of her later poems Speaker: viewer of these two people Situation: A man and woman in love

and living in poverty die Subject: love Audience: whoever will read this Structure: 5 stanzas with 4 lines and the

2nd line indented

Arguables Structure: the 2nd lines put together Light in Dark

Light shows up better in the darkest places True love shows up the best in the worst of

times Ireland and it’s population

Man is Ireland and woman is population man gives woman all he has but in the spring

they’re both dead Thousands dead in Irish famine

Arguables continued Toxins of a whole history

Potato famine due to toxins Ignorance of gov’t killed the people

4th stanza Love isn’t easy Most love stories are tragic

Literary features Directions: London group of businessmen

collected money and bought maize to send to western Ireland (along with clothes and other supplies)

‘W’ words: emphasizes the worst and west Negative words: accents the severity of the

situation Love/Relationship words: stresses the love

tone throughout the poem and the relationship of these two people