Honesty In Emily Dickinson's Poem 'Mollified Again'

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Mollified Again Tell the truth, but don’t be honest. Dickinson introduces the grey into man’s ideological construct as she seeks to redefine honesty to her audience. At least, Emily Dickinson reasons in her poem, “Tell all the truth but tell it slant,” man must “slant” the truth if he wants others to hear what he is saying. Utilizing iambic meter, patterns of rhyme, and metaphor, Dickinson illustrates to her audience that man needs blunted truth. Dickinson incorporates iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter throughout her work to parallel her philosophy of abated truth. The lack of consistency provided by the use of irregular meter represents to the audience the similar nature and pattern man speaks in when trying very hard to be honest, but ultimately losing resolve and sweetening his words instead. Man falls into a cyclical pattern of telling half-truths because, like the rhythm of the iambic meter, it sounds better to his natural ears. Honesty in degrees is therefore a truer representation of how to tell man the truth as demonstrated in the alignment of the irregular meter of iambic tetrameter and trimeter. …show more content…

Through the depicted rhyme scheme of ABABCDCD, the audience feels a placated chaos. The lack of consistency parallels the tendency to blunt the truth while still maintaining a pattern of pleasing schemes to the hearer’s ears. Similarly, the end rhymes, such as “slant” and “delight” and “eased” and “blind” are not perfect rhymes but slant rhymes, still pleasing to the ear of the intended flatter-ee, but not a true (perfect)

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