Emily Dickinson Research Paper

Emily Dickinson was a poet who lived in the 1800’s. Her poetry, however, was popularized after her death. Her poems are very intricate and well thought out. One noticeable thing she does in a lot of her poems is to use color. Dickinson uses different colors, especially purple, to evoke emotional responses and symbolize many varying factors of life and nature and also utilizes color to help her audience understand the poem's intended meaning.

Colors often mean many different things in Emily Dickinson’s poetry. One example of this is her most commonly used color, purple. There are a lot of poems that use purple and each use has its own meaning. One way Dickinson uses purple is to express beauty in nature. To quote Symbolism of the Color Purple

Purple, in Dickinson’s poetry, can also mean awareness and peace of mind. It shows stillness, calmness, serenity and

Often in Dickinson’s poetry the meaning is not outright stated. But with colors, and their deeper meanings, we can infer the true meaning of the poem. H.M. Cullen wrote an unpublished thesis on Dickinson’s work and the color therein, in this he states “her specific use of color reveals knowledge and insights not so artistically manifested by other poetic techniques. (Cullen)” The poem She Sweeps With Many Colored Brooms is an example of this in of itself. The Poem is about the beauty of the sunset but at a first look, without any analysis, it could be a poem about a woman cleaning a room. With the knowledge of purple being a color which often represents beauty in nature and the choice to use “purple” and “amber”, Dickinson creates the image of the sunset in the audience’s mind. This is an example of color being used in her poems to reveal the deeper parts of the poem, however by no means is it the only. There are lots of examples of seeing the true intention of a poem through Emily Dickinson’s use of color. As Nicholas Ruddick says in his thesis about the significance of color, “an in depth knowledge of Dickinson’s writing habits can ensure a better understanding of her works (Ruddick)”. Dickinson’s use of color helps to gain a better understanding of the poem Purple Figures (768) as well. In this poem Emily Dickinson Describes the mountains as “purple figures” which