McHugh, Heather : What Hell Is

Literature Annotations

Genre	Poem
Keywords	AIDS, Death and Dying, Family Relationships, Illness and the Family, Infectious Disease, Patient Experience, Suffering
Summary	A man suffers from a disease that "came / from love, or some / such place" (AIDS?). He has come home to his father's house to die. He grows thin, his sores will not heal, family and friends grow distant. While in the kitchen family members discuss how much the illness affects them, the sick man himself is already in hell, "which is / the living room . . . . "
Source	Shades
Publisher	Wesleyan Univ. Press
Edition	1988
Place Published	Middletown, Conn.
Alternate Source	On Doctoring
Alternate Publisher	Simon & Schuster
Alternate Edition	1995, 2001
Alternate Editors	Richard Reynolds & John Stone
Place Published	New York
Annotated by	Coulehan, Jack
Date of Entry	02/22/94
Last Revised	03/05/02