We Healthy Few
In the poem, Much Madness is Divinest Sense written by Emily Dickinson, the author explores the different views on individuality. She starts off the poem by saying, “Much Madness is divinest Sense - To a discerning Eye - Much Sense - The starkest Madness -” With these lines, Dickinson compares the views on sanity. Here, the term “sanity” can be understood in two different ways - One who understands everything will be driven insane, or one who is insane will be driven to understand everything. She links a one’s understanding and acceptance of the knowledge to one’s state of mind. During this comparison, Dickinson also mentions the presence of others. The “discerning Eye” she references can be interpreted as society, judgement or simply
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The word “madness” can be seen in the poem several times. Unlike its synonyms such as “crazy” or “insane,” this word was selected because of the negative connotation it has. Both “crazy” or “insane” can have both good and bad meanings while the term “madness” has a dominant negative meaning. In the first line, Dickinson uses the word “divinest” when describing perfect sense. The word “divine” gives off a feeling of perfection that is comparable to a work of a god. Here, the author uses the term “divinest Sense” to describe “sense” in its purest form. The author also uses the word “prevail” in the lines, “’Tis the Majority In this, as all, prevail.” Here, she uses the words prevail to indicate that there is a struggle that the majority wins in the end. This struggle is the controversy over different views. In the last line, Dickinson writes, “And handled with a Chain.” She uses the words “handled” and “chain” to show how individuality can be looked down upon. Dickinson selects these words to show how people with different views and beliefs are seen as dangerous by the majority and are treated as animals that need to be
Her voice expresses the individual power to select the people whose opinions matter as well as who the individual lets in. “The Soul selects her own Society - / Then - shuts the Door - (354).” It also represents how the individual has the power to make choices independent from the majority view. Dickinson also voices that individualism can come along with unacceptance because you are not conforming yourself to the standards of society,“This is my letter to the World / That never wrote to Me - “ (This is my Letter to the World 354).
only this, but Dickinson illustrates poetic skill in the unity of the poem. She makes her
“It was not death, for I stood up…”, draws us into a world of depression that could only be expressed through poetry. In the face of internal—and external—questions about loneliness and self-loathing, Dickinson’s poem is a moving testament that laments these particular states of emotion and despair. One cannot explain nor comprehend the depth of how she feels. Her images of darkness and death, as well as her specific metaphors and poetic devices allows the reader to enter her chaotic state of mind. Although she concedes the impossibility of comprehending her emotions, through her writing, the reader can understand her confusion, hopelessness and anguish. If we also know depression, we cannot find solace in her words, but we can rest a little knowing that we are not alone.
Both poets prove that the darkness of which they speak of is greatly misconceived by many, they convey that the “dark” (Dickinson 1) or “night” (Frost 1) is often misunderstood and that something’s are “neither wrong nor right” (Frost 14). These poems of great darkness attempt to shed “newness of the night” (Dickinson 2) to their audience, or in Dickinson’s case never intending to publish her works, her own self. They attempt to enlighten their readers,, a loose term,, and gain a new understanding of the unknown darkness and night that society has black-labeled and ostracized. Even more, there are a few common reoccurring archetypes in literature that stay consistent in most literary works, universal patterns such as; the rise and the fall, the mentor and the student, the journey and the ending, and the most pertinent and commonly used; the good and the evil, with light always being embodied by good and darkness always being the symbol of evil. But really what is darkness and light? Scientifically speaking, similarly just as darkness and light, cold does not truly exist it is just simply a space that heat does not reach. So technically, light and dark are not truly comparable with the archetypical good and evil. Society has taken
Dickinson’s Christian education affected her profoundly, and her desire for a human intuitive faith motivates and enlivens her poetry. Yet what she has faith in tends to be left undefined because she assumes that it is unknowable. There are many unknown subjects in her poetry among them: Death and the afterlife, God, nature, artistic and poetic inspiration, one’s own mind, and other human beings.
In 'Much Madness is divinest Sense' (435), a definition poem, Emily Dickinson criticizes society's inability to accept rebellion, arguing that the majority is the side that should in fact be considered 'mad.' The perception of madness and insanity are a common theme among Dickinson's poetry, as she fought against society's tainted view of herself as crazy. She focuses on how judgmental society is on non conformist views when she describes the majority as 'discerning' (line 2). As similar to most of her poetry, she writes in iambic meter and uses slant rhyme, as lines one, three, and seven end with 'Sense', 'Madness', 'dangerous', and lines six and eight, in 'sane' and 'Chain' in seemingly rhyme scheme. Dickinson credits the majority with prevailing, however, anyone who disagrees is considered a threat to society and sentenced to punishment.
Emily Dickinson wrote two poems titled “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers --,” one published in 1859 and the second published in 1861. These poems share close to identical first stanzas and dramatically differing second stanzas, causing the poems to stand on their own as individual, different poems. However, themes of life, death, and resurrection, remain the same. The speaker of each poem performs the theme of the poem through the tone, which is revealed in the specific language choices as well as the individual structures throughout.
Though Dickinson’s poem may initially seem transcendental, it can also be interpreted as a mixture of Emerson’s transcendental ideas and those that support the notion of imagination. Dickinson’s poem serves as a response to Emerson’s ideas because she adds on to his thoughts and unites his idea that there is oneness present in the world with the notion that imagination and sight serve as a bridge that connects human consciousness with nature to create this oneness that Emerson believes in. In the first stanza, the narrator says, that “I got my eye put out” (1), showing that she can now only see from one eye because of the singular use of eyes. Because she only talks of having lost sight in one eye, it can be assumed that she laments the limited vision that is now provided by her remaining eye. The narrator’s fragmented and limited vision caused by the loss of one eye is captured through the extensive use of dashes, which are used to separate the sentences, making them give a feeling of disarray and disjointedness.
In "Faith"..., Dickinson presents a witty and biting satirical look at Faith and its limitations. While it still amuses readers today, it must be mentioned that this short poem would have had a greater impact and seriousness to an audience from the period Dickinson lived in. Dickinson was raised in a strict Calvinist household and received most of her education in her youth at a boarding school that also followed the American Puritanical tradition she was raised in. In this short, witty piece Dickinson addresses two of the main obsessions of her generation: The pursuit of empirical knowledge through science, faith in an all-knowing, all-powerful Christian god and the debate on which was the more powerful belief. In this poem Dickinson uses humor to ease her position in the debate on to the reader. Dickinson uses her ability to write humourously and ironically (as seen in her suggestion of the use of microscopes) to present a firm, controversial opinion into w...
This poem is very interesting in many aspects because it reminds me of a person that I use to know. In my life I have met people just like Emily Dickinson who were mentally depressed and very unsociable. In this poem it shows how unstable her mind was in words that she wrote in her poems. I do not want people to get me wrong she was a very smart woman it was said that she attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, it also said that she was one of the best poets of all times. I do not understand were she went wrong because she lived a normal childhood in which she was very bright, witty, friendly to people, she had friends, and she went to parties. So where did she go wrong? By her early 30's she began to separate herself from everyone, even the people who she obviously loved had to speak with her from the other side of a closed door. In her life it was that she was in love with some man who died this maybe her for become very depressed. Emily Dickinson was very suicidal (meaning she tried to kill her many times, but was afraid of what it would be like).
In After great pain, a formal feeling comes(341), Emily Dickinson offers the reader a transitus observation of the time just after the death of a loved one. Dickinson questions where one goes in the afterlife asking, 'Of Ground, or Air' or somewhere else (line 6)' We often remember those who die before us, as we ourselves, as morbid as it may be, with everyday, are brought closer to our own deaths. As used in most of her poetry, she continues in iambic meter with stressed then unstressed syllables. Dickinson, however, straying away from her norm of 8-6-8-6 syllable lines repeating, uses a seemingly random combination of ten, eight, six, and four syllables, with the entire first stanza of ten syllables per lines. Line three lends itself to ambiguity as Dickinson writes, 'The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,' he, refers to the heart, yet she doesn't specify exactly what he bore. Dickinson refers to the Quartz grave growing out of the ground as one dies, lending itself to a certain imagery of living after death (lines 8-9). Although the poem holds no humor, she stretches to find what goes on after death. As we get to the end of the process of letting go of the one dying, Dickinson reminds us of the figurative and literal coldness of death. The cold symbolizes an emotion and lifeless person as well as the lack of blood circulation.
Literary Analysis of Emily Dickinson's Poetry. Emily Dickinson is one of the most famous authors in American history, and a good amount of that can be attributed to her uniqueness in writing. In Emily Dickinson's poem 'Because I could not stop for Death,' she characterizes her overarching theme of Death differently than it is usually described through the poetic devices of irony, imagery, symbolism, and word choice. Emily Dickinson likes to use many different forms of poetic devices and Emily's use of irony in poems is one of the reasons they stand out in American poetry. In her poem 'Because I could not stop for Death,' she refers to 'Death' in a good way.
This shows Dickinson's anger toward God. She does not want to have to die to
Emily Dickinson, a radical feminist is often expressing her viewpoints on issues of gender inequality in society. Her poems often highlight these viewpoints. Such as with the case of her poem, They shut me up in Prose. Which she place herself into the poem itself, and address the outlining issues of such a dividend society. She is often noted for using dashes that seem to be disruptive in the text itself. Dickinson uses these disruption in her text to signify her viewpoints on conflictual issues that reside in society. From the inequality that women face, to religion, to what foreseeable future she would like to happen. All of her values and morales are upheld by the dashes that Dickinson introduces into her poems.
Psychological criticism is known as the type of criticism that analyses the writer’s work within the realms of Freud’s psychological theories. Such approach can be used when trying to reconstruct an author’s position throughout their literary writings, as well as understanding whom the author was and how their mind created such works. When considering the work of Emily Dickinson, psychoanalytic criticism comes into play with the role of explaining the many meanings behind her poetry, as to make the reader relate to such poetry on a deeper level or not to who she was as a human being.