Filling Station Essay Questions

How does "Filling Station" make use of exclamatory and interrogative sentences?

The evolution of the speaker's emotions can, to a degree, be tracked via the types of sentences that appear in the poem. The work's first stanza includes two exclamatory sentences: "Oh, but it is dirty!" and "Be careful with that match!" The emphatic tone used here conveys not enthusiasm but anxiety and dismay. Later, however, exclamations give way to questions: "Do they live in the station?" in the third stanza, and then, in the fifth, "Why the extraneous plant?/Why the taboret?/Why, oh why, the doily?" Now, the speaker's tense disapproval has dissipated, making room for curiosity and exploration.

Discuss the motif of oil in the poem.

Oil is the most persistent motif in "Filling Station," appearing in the poem's first lines as well as its final ones. At first, the speaker's fixation on oil is a mark of her general feeling of disgust toward the station. She links it with dirtiness and even danger, instructing an unidentified listener to be careful lighting a match. Later, however, when her attitude has softened, oil becomes a mark of love and nurturing. She imagines the soothing whispering of the oil cans arranged around the station, and speculates that the begonia plant has been not watered but oiled. Thus, oil shifts from a sign of neglect to one of care.