ipl-logo

Tragic Disobedience As Depicted In Emily Dickinson's Poems

2666 Words11 Pages

1. Emily Dickinson’s poetry was mostly published after her death with only a few poems being published while she was alive. Those poems in which she published when she was alive were altered by the publishers in an attempt to make her work more mainstream. This included changing some of the words as well as removing her famous dashes at the end of lines. Following her death her work had the same kind of edits made to it until the facsimile copies of her work were published. After the hundreds of poems were found in her chest after her death they were published with alternative words she sometimes provided in the drafts. The facsimile versions of her work were published in a book in which all of the pages had been directly copied giving the …show more content…

Flint. Everything that represented Linda was a contradiction to what a slave and a women should be at the time she broke down boundaries for her freedom in the face of some of the greatest adversity possible. Linda described herself as having “stubborn disobedience”. Something special that she and Douglass did that is similar to the tactics of John Smith is the demonizing of the group you want to be seen as the other. This is consistent through many of the text we read this semester and I think will be a common theme in many other works of literature. In using language that makes your opposite group seem evil and threatening you are able to polarize the two groups. For Smith this meant having his men and everyone back in England continue to support his reckless terror on the Native Americans but painting them as less than human and himself as super human. For Douglass and Jacobs it was a role reversal form the language that was used to describe them as slaves to showing the evil, manipulative and violent ways of their master in order to separate white slave owners as the others and slaves and the human relatable ones to the reader. Gender also plays a role in all of the decision making between who is in and who is out. It is a complex system of the other and I do not know if it is possible to stop it. We are programed in every situation to look for the winner and the losers and until we learn that the only way to be peaceful and productive is to be on an equal playing field this idea of the “other” will continue to lay out in both our lives and

Show More
Related
2871 Words | 12 Pages

Living in the Flint’s home, Linda and William are experiencing intense abuse and harrassment. Linda especially is being continuously harassed by Dr. Flint, and Mrs. Flint becomes very jealous and aggressive. Linda describes her as lazy when running her home, but energetic when whipping her slaves. Rather than find sympathy for their enslaved, many plantation mistresses would turn against them for “seducing” their husbands. Linda tells the story of an enslaved mother giving birth to her master’s child with extreme complications, while her mistress stands above her jeering that she deserves to die.

Read More
850 Words | 4 Pages

For a man to revolt against his master, he would stand up and fight him if necessary. However, for women slavery was a lot more focused on the mental torture that they endured on a daily basis. For Linda she was faced with the threats of taking her children and being sexually harassed. During the first years of service Dr. Flint would “whisper foul words” in her ear and she couldn’t “remain ignorant of their import.” Eventually, everyone knew the “guilty practices under that roof” and no one questioned them because of the consequences that would follow.

Read More
899 Words | 4 Pages

December 10, 1830, the town of Amherst, Massachusetts quietly received the little girl who would grow to give identity to the very essence of the American poet. Emily Dickinson, an enigmatic recluse and unlikely literary genius would become, after her death in 1886, one of the most iconic figures in American literature. Dickinson was notably peculiar; this peculiarity most certainly contributes to the great intrigue surrounding her eerie writing. From 1860 to her death, Dickinson lived virtually in complete isolation, on her childhood homestead. It was during this time that she wrote her most esteemed works.

Read More
169 Words | 1 Pages

The major theme of the poem is that in the human heart, hope endures, defeating despair despite overwhelming circumstances. Emily Dickinson characterizes hope as a bird. Nature metaphors. The first two lines: " 'Hope ' is a thing with feathers / That perches in the soul--".

Read More
909 Words | 4 Pages

Due to the complexity of the concept of belonging, a true sense of connection can be found in different circumstances for different people. Many individuals’ sense of belonging is strongly determined by other individual’s attitude. However, some go completely against society’s beliefs and alienate themselves from society. Emily Dickinson’s poems I died for beauty but was scarce, I have been hungry all these years and the blues poem, Refugee Blues convey the effect of society’s attitude on a person’s sense of belonging and provide opposing views towards the effects of others’ attitudes.

Read More
236 Words | 1 Pages

One of the most greatest and popular writer in the late eighteenth century to nineteenth century, Emily Dickinson who wrote around 1,800 poems in her lifetime. Her poetry and writings was considered as the finest in English language. Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was such a mystery not until when she died. During her lifetime, the poems that she wrote out of 1,800 only ten of her work was published publicly. One of the poems that she allowed publication was the literary piece called “Success,” during her lifetime.

Read More
88 Words | 1 Pages

Dickinson frequently builds her poems around this trope of change.   Her vocabulary circles around transformation and often ends before the change is completed. Emily Dickinson died in Amherst in 1886.

Read More
483 Words | 2 Pages

One would think that if a person wrote these beautiful poems, then they would want them to be published. However, this was not the case with Emily Dickinson. In one of her poems, “Some Keep the Sabbath” she describes how she keeps the sabbath day compared to how others keep the sabbath day. She talks about the differences between her Church and the other people’s Church. She also talks about how she knows that God has already accepted her into the Kingdom.

Read More
717 Words | 3 Pages

Title of Essay When most people think about darkness they usually think of evil, fear/fright, wickedness and many more negative things. Some people like Emily Dickinson who was a famous poet thought differently about darkness and what it meant to her. In two of her poems called We grow accustomed to the dark and Before I got my eyes put out she talks a lot about darkness and sight but, she uses them in a metaphorical way instead of a literal way. In both of the poems being in the dark and losing your sight both have deeper meanings and are used as metaphors to explain deeper things in life.

Read More
2011 Words | 9 Pages

limova Professor Viorica Patea Birk American Poetry and Poetics 30 November 2014 “Dying is a wild night and a new road”: different approaches to the concept of death in Emily Dickinson’s poetry. In 1852, Emily Dickinson wrote a letter to Jane Humphrey, one of her longtime friends, in which she states: “I think of the grave very often, and how much it has got of mine, and whether I can ever stop it from carrying of what I love; that makes me sometimes speak of it when I don’t intend.” (Dickinson, 197) In another letter addressed to her cousin, Dickinson wrote a phrase that later became one of the most widely quoted statements of the poetess:

Read More
625 Words | 3 Pages

The poem that stood out the most while reading this assortment of Emily Dickinson poems, was her poem numbered 656/520. This poem used imagery in numerous ways throughout in order to show the audience the important themes and the overall meaning of this work of literature. The poem’s main theme was about a walk on the beach that the poet encountered in the early morning. Although the poem is about a beach it can also give the audience contextual clues into other aspects of life.

Read More
671 Words | 3 Pages

With 800 poems in her mind, “her brain was surely wider than the sky”. As a famous poet, Emily Dickinson continues to delight each new generation of her unique verse. Dickinson has written a handful of poems in her lifetime! ‘Success is Counted Sweetest’ in her big collections of immortality, death, art, nature, and religion written in the late 60s. Using her unique skills to write poems, Emily Dickinson decides to write poems based on her true expressions and feelings in the Mid 70s.

Read More
882 Words | 4 Pages

She wrote poems while she was isolated in her room that described what nature, love, and death would be. She has influenced many other writers of poetry, since hers have such a deep meaning behind them. Several of her poems can be explained from a personal point of view, which is incredible in poetry. A poet’s goal is to get the reader to think and feel emotions towards the poem they have written, and apparently, Emily has done a great job at doing that. Countless of people have been awestruck with her work to this day.

Read More
969 Words | 4 Pages

Dickinson also incorporates her fixation on seclusion through the syntax in her poetry. An example of this is whenever she places a dash in her poems, which is her signature mark in poetry. An example of this is when she writes, “And sweetest- in the Gale- is heard-And sore must be the storm-” (Vendler 118). This line from the poem is interpreted to mean that a person should hold onto hope especially when life is hard, which is shown when the Gale starts to blow.

Read More
1418 Words | 6 Pages

Does failure help one to value success or is it better to just focus on the successful times? Emily Dickinson wrote the poem “Success is counted sweet” describing a situation where an army member was on the ground dying. He was defeated so he could understand how valuable success is. The band Queen is the artist of their song “We Are The Champions” describing how there were hard times never defeat. They also describe how sweet their success really is.

Read More

More about Tragic Disobedience As Depicted In Emily Dickinson's Poems

Related Topics

Open Document