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An Analysis of Elizabeth Bishop's 12 O'Clock News Essay

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An Analysis of Elizabeth Bishop's 12 O'Clock News

In “12 O’Clock News,” Elizabeth Bishop accentuates the difficulty involved in perceiving the “truth.” She utilizes a technique of constructing an exotic world out of objects that can be found in a newsroom. By defamiliarizing a newsroom, she questions our trust in what we perceive. Is it truly a journey to another world or just another perspective on something we are already familiar with? The intent of this transformation is to create a substitute for reality, analogous to the substitute reality which the media presents to us each day as its product, the “news.” The news media are capable of creating a world beyond what we see everyday, presenting us with what appears to be the truth …show more content…

The pile of manuscripts or the “slight landslide [that] occurred in the northwest about an hour ago” (lines 13-14)* links the surroundings with the newsroom. These discarded manuscripts are not found in a generic office setting.

Juxtaposing a real and fanciful interpretation of objects, Bishop separates each of the objects from the technological terms that ordinarily are used to describe them and depicts them with a naturalist language, which make the objects not readily recognizable without the label off to the side accompanying the description. Bishop adopts a naturalist language, which would usually be expected in a description of a rural or completely untouched area. By applying this language to various objects in the newsroom, she disillusions the reader with this created world. Using this technique, Bishop distances us from the familiar object in order to question our understanding of our environment or the basis on which we construct our opinions of other cultures or places. For example, the typewriter is described as having an “elaborate terracing of its southern glacis gleam[ing] faintly in the dim light, like fish scales” (8-10). By relating the typewriter to terraces and fish scales, rather than using technical terms or presenting the

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