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Stanza 6 Summary

Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.

Lines 21-24

Oh, oh, oh! she cried
as the ambulance men lifted
her to the stretcher—
Is this what you call

  • We leap forward in time and hear the grandmother crying as the ambulance men haul her out of the house on a stretcher. 
  • Notice how the "Oh, oh, oh!" here rhymes with the grandmother's "No, no, no" from line 12. It kinda marks the progression of the story, right?
  • The rhyme calls attention to the fact that she was refusing to go before, but now she's crying out as she's being hauled away. 
  • In the final line of the stanza, the grandmother revs up to give us some sass as enjambment takes us to the next stanza.