ipl-logo

Emily Dickinson Research Paper

972 Words4 Pages

The beginning of our journey with Emily Dickinson’s poetry began with a sheet of paper describing how to tackle her intricate writing style. The first line started, “Reading Emily Dickinson well will change the way you see the world, if you let it”. Honestly, I believed that I would come out of this section the exact same person I walked in as, but this is not true. I have not lost my faith in God, the goodness of humanity, nor anything to an extreme, but I can say that Emily Dickinson has struck down certain Truths from her poems into my head that will change the way I look at my everyday life. Natural death and rebirth are a part of all life. Whether it involves pain or joy, it is a constant cycle that will only keep repeating …show more content…

Dickinson is dreading the coming of spring to her life, which is an oddity in comparison to most other people. Dickinson enjoys the darkness and peacefulness that the winter season brings, with nothing new occuring in nature, an almost completely stagnant season. She also dreads the daffodils and bees, and only wants grass to grow high in order to block her out from viewing these new signs of life. Dickinson knows that nature will always keep moving forward, and there is nothing she can do about it, so she has to either stay behind and try to ignore it, or begin to accept it. Dickinson does accept it in some ways as she says she has grown accustomed, but never fully does because she views herself as the, “Queen of Calvary”, or the queen of suffering. This poem pushes into my life a small beacon of regret in the way I handled the passing of my grandmother earlier this year. I, like Emily Dickinson, only enveloped myself in sadness and wishing for the past, but I never considered how death is a natural part of life, and acceptance of this leads to a fuller more exciting life. Looking at her death in this light would have slightly eased the pain, as I would have understood how this was a natural part of life, and nature will always move on taking with it the past. For me, it was my grandmother of 82 years, and for Dickinson, …show more content…

The first three lines read, “ Pain - has an element of blank, / It can not recollect / where it began,” (1-3). Pain has been a part of the lives of all humans on this planet since the beginning of mankind, and it will not be going anywhere soon. Pain is one of the Truths of the world, as it will be a part of our lives no matter where we turn. This may bring a pessimistic tone to the poem, yet there is some beauty in this Truth. Being able to deal with pain and suffering makes humans stronger as a whole, and reading this poem put this thought into mind as soon as I read it. Dickinson is talking about physical and emotional pain that everyone experiences in their life, whether it be the loss of a family member, to the failing of a math exam, the pain experienced will push you further than you thought you could ever go before to be sure you will never feel that pain again. For the first two quizzes in AP Literature, I got at the highest a 70 percent, and was almost failing the class. To avoid this pain of failing and me losing faith in my ability to do well in an advanced level course, the next reading we had I took detailed and thorough notes. There was no quiz on this reading, but I kept up this quality of work and eventually I was able to do better on the quizzes, and know I can handle the AP course load. The ending stanza of the poem describes that , “It has

Show More
Related
655 Words | 3 Pages

Although Dickinson leads to a little happier of a path she comes up with the same conclusion in the poem. Her character in the poem goes from a familiar path into the darkness when then she states that you had to choose whether to become brave and overcome it, or let it overcome it. These changes in characters help us see how darkness is able to affect

Read More
272 Words | 2 Pages

In life, we lose things that are very important to us. Emily Dickinson’s poems show us how we must get accustomed to a new way of life. In her poems, she compares losing her sight to perhaps losing something very important to her. In order to grow after losing something very important, we must be brave and courageous to adapt to the new way of life. You must fully appreciate everything you are given in life because you never know when it may be taken away.

Read More
1094 Words | 5 Pages

This poem illustrates traits of aspiration. At the beginning of the poem, Dickinson has a darker tone. She discloses that people adjust to the dark. Literally, our eyes adjust to different shades of light, but also figuratively. What she proposes in lines 7-8, where she says “Then - fit our Vision to the Dark / And meet the Road- erect” (7-8), is that the darkness is the unknown and the road is our future.

Read More
513 Words | 3 Pages

The imagery Dickinson uses also portrays how “great pain” has the ability to numb people. In the third line, Dickinson calls the heart “stiff” This shows how the heart is incapable of feeling emotions such as love and happiness after it endures calamitous trials. Moving into the second stanza, Dickinson calls the feet moving in a wooden way. Wood is heavy and cumbersome and this imagery conveys the struggle

Read More
1181 Words | 5 Pages

“I had no time to hate-/ because/ The grave would hinder me-/And life was not so ample I/ Could finish- enmity-/Nor had I time to love-/but since/Some industry must be-/The little toil of love-/I thought/Was large enough for me-”(Dickinson). The major themes of this poem are love and hate and what is to come after death. The author writes with a hint or regret of not living her life to the fullest; but writes as if she is accepting she had accomplished in her lifetime.

Read More
415 Words | 2 Pages

Dickinson’s family background enriches the readers’ understanding of the theme – nature. Based on information from Poetryfoundation.org, Dickinson was born in a decent, upper-class family, with father working as a lawyer and a politician and mother working as a science researcher (Poetryfoundation.org, para.2). However, the way she describes in the poem is not the behavior of a person from upper-class. For instance, she uses words like “inebriate” and “little Tippler” to describe the narrator’s drunkenness (l.5&l.15).

Read More
998 Words | 4 Pages

In the poem, she talks about love and how she and her significant other split up. In the poem, Dickinson talks about her craving to be with her partner again. She is so desperately in love that she makes it a point that she is willing to wait forever, just as long as her partner comes back to her. When she says “I’d brush the summer by…As Housewives do, a Fly”, Dickinson uses similes to show that she does not care about the fact that her loved one left, just like a Housewife does not care to brush a fly away. She also uses a simile when she says “If certain, when this life was out-…I’d toss it yonder, like a Rind”, meaning that she is ready to do “toss” her unimportant body, to end her life, just so she could be reunited with her loved one in the Skies.

Read More
1000 Words | 4 Pages

Two popular poems that are great examples of her style of writing are “Because I could not stop for Death” and “I measure every Grief I meet”. Throughout these poems, Dickinson introduces the themes of death, immortality and the ways of life. Although these poems are similar they both introduce different ways of viewing how life is seen through the eyes of others and through the reader's eyes. In “Because I could not stop for Death” there is a common theme of death and eternity.

Read More
1654 Words | 7 Pages

Throughout the critically acclaimed poems by Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, a vast difference in both their styles and viewpoints is displayed. In the beginning of Dickinson’s poem in the first stanza, “I heard a fly buzz when I died,” one can perceive that Dickinson is not an ordinary poet. Her opinion of death is quite different than Whitman’s and many of her peers at the time. Emily Dickinson’s internal viewpoint expressed in her poetry defines her style and perception on life. On the other hand, Whitman’s viewpoint is the polar opposite because he expresses an external viewpoint.

Read More
808 Words | 4 Pages

The beautiful thing about poetry is that everyone can relate to some poet, or poem. To begin, Dickinson acquires a strong belief in God and Jesus Christ, just as I do. “ I shall know why when Time is over, and I shall cease to wonder why;” in this quote I believe that she is saying that Christians do not have to worry about the struggles and hardships that we may surpass while we are living on earth. As long as we continue in faith and perform his will, in the end we will all know why such trials come to us. This speaks volumes to me.

Read More
812 Words | 4 Pages

This suggests that grief is not essential in life and people always forget about grief. This line projects a stereotypical definition of grief which has a negative connotation. Continuing with the first line “The summer lapsed away --” (2) and “Too Imperceptible, at last” (3) she implies grief is not an everlasting thing. It will just be like summer, which will eventually pass by. Dickinson uses personification in line 2 as if the summer is running away.

Read More
973 Words | 4 Pages

Death is a natural part of life. Emily Dickinson highlights this fact in her poem, “Apparently With No Surprise”, through the use of personification. In this poem, Dickinson personifies the flower, the frost, and the sun to display the poem’s main theme of death. The flower is described as being happy, the frost as an assassin, and the sun as unmoved. Through this use of personification, Dickinson works to show how death is natural, and how it is not a cruel force, no matter how much it may seem so to those who live.

Read More
762 Words | 4 Pages

If Dickinson had used simple and plain words throughout the poem, the analyses would all be the same. There would be no variance. This poem demonstrates effective poetic techniques to create a piece of art, which can take on many different meanings depending on the reader. Even with all the criticisms in the world, no “right” answer exists, just different interpretations leading to different conclusions coming from different

Read More
549 Words | 3 Pages

Dickinson beings with, “I like the look of agony.” Agony is defined as the struggle preceding natural death, and in theology it is defined as the suffering of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane. It is safe to say that many of us would disagree with Dickinson but in the second line we understand why she likes the look of agony. It is a true. In line three she says that men cannot simulate convulsion.

Read More
557 Words | 3 Pages

As one reads Emily Dickinson’s poems, often times his or her first thought is “Wow! I have no idea what this means!” After reading a variety of her poems, it is clear that various ideas, people, and styles played into her works. Emily Dickinson was a woman of many complex personas—which is most prevalent in the letters she wrote to her sister, Susan. Throughout Dickinson’s works, she speaks of numerous subjects not to identify their meaning, but instead to explore the way these ideas impact life.

Read More

More about Emily Dickinson Research Paper

Open Document