The Power of Words“The Hospital Window” by James Dickey is an emotional poem about a son's struggle to cope with the impending death of his father. This poem incorporates figurative language and metaphors that create a story of emotion. It evokes such real emotion by drawing the reader into the faithfulness of the relationship between a son and his father when faced with the reality of death. Not only death in the physical sense, but also the journey one takes to reach it and the transcendence of faith. Each element of the poem is a cliffhanger for the next line, resulting in a reading that ignites the true creative power of the readers' mind. A son who is visiting his father in hospital narrates the poem. At the beginning of the poem, the reader is greeted by the line “I just came down to my father” (Dickey line 1). This stanza leads to the nature of poetry. It can be interpreted that the son is grieving and that "coming down" is a metaphor for the son's belief that his father has reached a spiritual point and is starting to rise above him, as if reaching the afterlife in heaven. This can only be deduced after understanding the style of the poem. On first reading, the reader would simply deduce the literal meaning of the verse: the son went down the elevator and is now on the street. Upon further observation, it should be noted that the same line that begins the poem also ends it, which confirms the writer's intention to make it figurative. The poem focuses on the son's feelings and thoughts as he looks at what he perceives to be the window of his father's hospital. The second stanza concretizes the literal foundation of the poem: the son is dejected by the gravity of the situation that revolves around his father's condition... middle of paper... he is not afraid for his life, because he knows that through this religious experience will have the same fate as his father. It's as if his father is already in heaven and reaches out to his son, letting him know that everything will be okay. Dickey is a mind capable of truly evoking mental images and feedback from the reader through his brilliant writing style. By the end of the poem, the reader feels as if they have ridden a roller coaster of a poignant portrayal of the reality of death, the feeling felt by those left behind by the dead, and also the power of faith. The final line of the poem now makes sense to the reader. The son is descended from his father. He has accepted the fact that his father will die and can now be at peace with that. Works Cited Dickey, James. Drown with others. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 1962.Print. 75-76