An Explication of an Excerpt from an Emily Dickinson Poem Emily Dickinson, often known as a recluse by the literary world, never left the safety of her home and wrote lots of poetry that were intended for no one to see them. Dickinson’s poem “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” is about a narrator who thinks being “somebody” is dreadful and exaggerated, but being a “nobody” is a pleasure (Dickinson 1478). This poem gives the reader the idea of why Dickinson appreciated her poems being unpublished, and why she valued her seclusion. Dickinson’s personality was unique, but the style of poetry she possessed differed as well. Dickinson uses tools like caesura, unconventional syntax, unusual capitalization, and persona to consistently break poetic rule. Emily Dickinson demonstrates American Romanticism through the …show more content…
These personal emotions rebel against the social rules of her time in which she is debating life’s meaning. Dickinson makes clear in the first stanza that being nobody is a rarity when she writes, “I’m Nobody! Who are you?/ Are you – Nobody – too?/ Then there’s a pair of us!” (Dickinson 1478). The reader can assume that Dickinson does not come across, as a “nobody” often when she writes, “Then there’s a pair of us!” By using the exclamation, Dickinson comes off as excited, demonstrating the normal reclusiveness that she is so used to. By stating, “Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!” in the fourth line of the poem, Dickinson lets the audience know that she used to shying away from social interactions in society. This reflects on Dickinson’s personal feeling about having her poetry published to the world. She did not want to publish her work to the world, because she was shy in nature, and also because of her American Romantic ways of defying the social norm. Dickinson would rather stray away from society and express her emotions through her poems privately. This also reveals Dickinson’s hopes that the person