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'Depicted In Mary Oliver's Oxygen'

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“So the merciful, noisy machine stands in our house working away in its lung-like voice” (824) is from Mary Oliver’s “Oxygen”. This quote is a metaphor, ultimately describing the oxygen tank in the home. The narrator’s loved one who is ill depends on the machine to breathe. The narrator seems to have a love/hate relationship with this machine; loving it as it keeps her loved one alive, and hating it for the reason that it has to be there at all. Oliver also describes the illness tastefully, but gets the point across; “Now the fire rises and offers a dozen, singing, deep-red
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