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In the poem, "In the Waiting Room," At first glance, it seems as if the speaker is just a normal little girl in Worcester, Massachusetts, waiting on her Aunt Consuelo in a dentist's office. But in line 60 we realize that Elizabeth Bishop, herself, is the speaker. In line 54 Bishop says that it is 3 days from her 7th birthday. We are told in the last line of the poem that it is February 5, 1918, which again agrees with the fact that Bishop is the speaker. She was born in 1911 in the same city the speaker is located at in the poem. It is said that this poem is one of the many autobiographical pieces Bishop has written. It is clear why some of the speaker's observations are so vivid, because Bishop is actually writing from her on experiences.

From her observations about the concrete things around her, we can tell that it is a young girl speaking. Often, as a young child, things are perceived as overwhelming. From the waiting room being "full of grown-up people" in line 8, to the "horrifying" breasts of the naked black woman in the National Geographic she was reading in line 28, we can tell that a lot of the things that people of older age may be used to and don't necessarily notice are quite uncomfortable for her. She also pays close attention to detail, as with most young children learning about the world around them. She notices small things like lamps and magazines (line 10). She often uses sensory perception to describe what she sees like how the margin of the magazine she's reading is yellow (line 35) or how it was too hot in the waiting room (line 90), things children notice right away. It's obvious that she is quite intelligent for her age, being able to read such a magazine and having knowledge of the world events such as the war. As she waits in the waiting room, she not only notices a lot about the world around her, but also about herself and how she fits in it.

The speaker is literally waiting for her aunt in the dentist's office, but as she makes sudden revelations about herself we notice that she is figuratively waiting to take her place in the world. In line 60, she says "But I felt: you are an I,/ you are an Elizabeth,/ you are one of them." She realizes that she is just like the people she sees in the waiting room, just like her Aunt Consuelo, just like the naked woman in the magazine. She's getting older and she wonders who she will become. She wonders why she has to be one of them (line 75) and whether or not their similarities connected them to one another or made them the same (line 77).

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