Structure

Loretta Ramkissoon’s essay “Which Floor?” has a circular structure, which means that it begins and ends with the same element: dying in a council estate. The beginning captures the reader’s attention, as it starts with a description of how “tower people” die upright:

No one ever tells you that, however you die in our tower block, you will leave this world upright. (...) the paramedics (...) wait at the door and when the lift’s trusty ping signals its arrival, the stretcher is carried across. Then they stand in the lift with the dead body. (ll. 1-5)

Here, the image is rather macabre and it makes the tower seem like an inconvenient place to live in. The end of the essay presents a similar image. However, this time, Ramkissoon turns it into a thing of pride: “We may live tall and straight, we may be elevated and fall, but when the wind blows we...