There are a lot of things children don't understand. Their lack of experience makes them ignorant of what is happening around them, and even unconscious of the presence of death. When someone a child knows dies, it's a very difficult transition: where did they go? Will I not be able to see him again? What will happen next? When a person is young, their understanding is less developed, so there are a lot of questions. “First Death in Nova Scotia” is about a little girl who has just experienced her first loss, namely the death of her little cousin Arthur. The speaker presents to us, our readers, the situation she must endure and tries to make us understand what it represents for her with some childish analogies. Elizabeth Bishop confronts innocence with death at the hands of a little girl who knows nothing about death. Bishop brings together a variety of concepts and techniques in the poem to demonstrate the speaker's innocence. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essayOne of these concepts is language, a simple and childish vocabulary that makes us understand his way of thinking. With her vocabulary, the speaker portrays her confusion and ignorance towards death due to the metaphors and similes she uses. In the fourth stanza, she says: “He was all white, like a doll / that had not yet been painted” (31-32). This comparison shows the lack of description the speaker has to say about her cousin, because she is a young girl who had a truly happy and pleasant childhood and has never experienced such a sad and confusing thing. This is out of his comfort zone. Another example is in the third stanza, “Arthur's coffin was / an iced cupcake” (28). This language used shows how the speaker tries to relate the situation with things that are familiar to her to create an image of her cousin so that she can understand what is happening. This comparison shows his knowledge of death, which is truly poor. This is how Bishop emphasizes the idea that death is a new thing for the speaker and how difficult it is for her to explain what she sees. Confusion is another thing that the author uses in the poem to show how difficult this situation is for the child and how she faces it for the first time. In the third stanza, the speaker's mother says to him, "Come say goodbye / to your little cousin Arthur" (22-23). She is so confused that she doesn't know what to do and her mother has to guide her through this process. This is also the only thing said in reference to his cousin's death, no one shows any emotion over Arthur's death. It's like the little girl is the only one who cares about him. This silence contributes to intensifying the little girl's confusion. In the last stanza the speaker says, “But how could Arthur go away, holding his little lily in his arms, with his eyes so closed and the roads deep in snow?” (47-50). She knows he's gone, but at the same time she doesn't know it. It's the same feeling you get when you know something has happened but you don't know why it happened, what exactly happened, or what is going to happen. Next. She just knows that he left her and that she won't see him again, she doesn't know where her cousin is. But the sentence that shows all of the speaker's confusion is in stanza number two, where she says, "Since Uncle Arthur shot him / in the head, / he hasn't said a word." (11-13). The reader has the feeling that it was Uncle Arthur who killed cousin Arthur, because the author does not specify who this “him” is, but indicates in.