Hospital Sketches Literary Elements

Historical fiction, memoir.

A field hospital in Washington during the Civil War.

The narrator of the sketches is a young woman named Tribulation Periwinkle. She is depicted as ambitious and determined. Therefore the first person point of view is used in the book.

The tone of the work is generally sarcastic with few exceptions where it alters to a grave one; the scene of John’s death is one such instance. The mood is comical and adventurous.

The protagonist of the work is its narrator, nurse Tribulation Periwinkle. Patriarchy and Racism are portrayed as the main antagonistic forces in the book.

The Major conflict in the book is Tribulation’s unconventional ambitions and desire to do what the women of her time were not allowed like fighting in war for instance.

John and Tribulation become very close to one another, and his character is a significant one. The narrative reaches its climax when John is expecting a last letter from home. In this scene, even the reader is breathless with expectation, and wonders if John’s last wish would be fulfilled.

“It seemed a David and Jonathan sort of friendship” This statement concerns John, the blacksmith from Virginia, and Ned his friend. It foreshadows the death of the former by comparing it to the biblical figure of Jonathan who dies in battle to be lamented later by his friend David.

“At the time I write of, he discovered me sitting on the stairs…while I enjoyed a fit of coughing… cheering myself, meantime, with a secret conviction that pneumonia was waiting for me round the corner” This passage is loaded with understatement, for pneumonia and coughing-fits are described by means of positive language instead of a grave one.

“…quite sure that the evening papers would announce the appearance of the Wandering Jew, in feminine habiliments.” This is an allusion to the legend of the Wandering Jew, a mythical man who was cursed by walking the earth until the second coming.

“The White House was lighted up, and carriages were rolling in and out of the great gate. I stared hard at the famous East Room, and would have liked a peep through the crack of the door.” This is one example of the vivid imagery used by Alcott down to the smallest details such as the crack of a door.

At the beginning of the sketches, Tribulation rejects her father’s suggestion of writing a book on the grounds that it is not what she desires to do in life. Paradoxically, she ends up writing a book one way or another by writing her memoir as a nurse.

“A short story and a simple one, but the man and the mother were portrayed better than pages of fine writing could have done it.” This is a parallel between simple stories and fine literary ones.

The following passage is made of a series of metonymy used by a young sergeant who was in the habit of calling his companions by other names according to their injuries: "Hallo, old Fits is off again!" "How are you, Rheumatiz?" "Will you trade apples, Ribs?" "I say, Miss P., may I give Typus a drink of this?" "Look here, No Toes, lend us a stamp, there's a good feller,"

Synecdoche: “And, whipping up her coffee-pot and plate of toast, she gladdened the eyes and stomachs of two or three dissatisfied heroes, by serving them with a liberal hand” Here, the term hand does not refer to the organ itself but to the way and generosity, with which, the soldiers were treated.

“The nurses were willing to be served by the colored people, but seldom thanked them, never praised, and scarcely recognized them in the street; whereat the blood of two generations of abolitionists waxed hot in my veins, and, at the first opportunity, proclaimed itself, and asserted the right of free speech as doggedly as the irrepressible Folsom herself.”

Blood here is given human characteristics through the acts of proclamation and assertion of speech.