In the Waiting Room Themes

The big questions that Elizabeth raises in this poem are really all about identity. Who am I? What is my relationship to other people? Can I be an individual and part of a greater humanity at the s...

Elizabeth is acutely aware of the age difference between herself and the "grown-ups" of the poem – Aunt Consuelo, the patients in the waiting room, and the naked women in the National Geographic....

Elizabeth has an intense reaction to the naked women in the magazine. We could even say that she overreacts to them. What's so horrifying about naked women? What exactly is so scary about their bar...

Elizabeth is both horrified by and drawn to the African people in National Geographic. Their strangeness – the color of their skin, their lack of clothing, their elaborate neck coils – scares a...

The crux of "In the Waiting Room" is really the National Geographic magazine itself. Elizabeth seems quite proud of the fact that she can read this magazine for grown-ups at such a young age. It's...