Analysis of Emily Dickinson's "The snake", "In the Garden", and "It bloomed and dropt, a Single Noon—." Emily Dickinson uses nature in almost all of her poetry. She uses many literary techniques in her poems to show her interpretations of nature and the world around her. In the poem "The snake" she uses imagery in the forms sight and touch. The poem describes the snake as transient or passing swiftly and deceptive or misleading. His appearance is sudden. As the snake moves it divides the grass in one place, and as he moves, in another. The speaker has been deluded by the snake's appearance. It mistakes the snake for a whip or lash. This is a use of situational irony. Emily also uses personification to give the snake human characteristics. She uses the words, "fellow", "rides", and "comb" which are normally seen as human related terms. Also she describes the ground as a "floor" which suggests a house, rather than outdoors which can bee seen as a symbol for the snake being more than just an animal. This is another way to show that the snake is almost human-like. She goes on to say that "The grass divided as with a comb", which uses more imagery and a simile to again relate the snake to a human object. Further on in the poem she describes the snake as it gets closer to the speaker and then farther away. As the snake goes by her it brushes her leg and she talks about how she feels for nature great overwhelming emotion. In the fifth stanza the words emphasize the speaker's connection with nature and her people. The snake is included in "natures people" and she feels a connection with it. The speaker feels "a tighter breathing" and zero at the bone" every time the snake goes by her. The connotation of "tighter breathing" s... ... middle of paper ... ...and took advantage of it always being there and that she was acting selfish. Finally, the speaker realizes that she should have spent more time nurturing and caring for the flower instead of just figuring that it would be there the next day. Emily Dickinson's writing style tended to change as her moods changed. Many of her poems were very literal and used little connotations, symbols, or allusions while on the other hand many of her other poems were full of these same qualities. Emily very much wrote for herself and not for other people so sometime it is hard because she doesn't always keep her same style of writing and use of literary terms. All of her poems were good it just depended on who was reading them and how they interpreted them. Work Cited Franklin, R. W. ed. The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1998. PS1541 .A1
Then she also used simile of figures of speech to describe the dead snake. For instance, “He is as cool and gleaming as a braided whip”, the speaker compared the black snake with a braided whip, and “he is as beautiful and quiet as a dead brother”, she regarded the black brother. Let’s start with the first one of two sentences, the speaker chose the braided whip as vehicle because its shape also was as same as the black snake’s, but different from an old bicycle whip, the speaker chose some positive words that were “cool” and “gleaming” to describe the black snake, I thought the conver of diction presented changes in her delicate feelings. Subsequently, the second sentence made me understood what changes were. I thought that was she no longer think the black snake was a snake but her compatriot, because she said that he was her dead brother. These similes also expressed the speaker’s affection in
...the way he seems to enjoy causing pain and agitation onto his wife, Delia. Furthermore, the snake embodies Skyes because of its association to the devil. The devil steals, kills, hurts, and simply cause’s pain onto others as Skyes does on his wife. It is quite easy to see that author, Zora Neale Hurston, uses the snake more than just a terrifying animal that Delia does not favor.
First, Emily Dickinson poems are often under scrutiny since she was never married. As a poet who wrote so intently about love but was never married, she had to have had some form of inspiration. The fact that she wrote several love poems but never married may have caused more people to look into her personal life and see what drove the women to write such poems. Early Dickinson biographers identified George Gould as a suitor who may have been briefly engaged to the poet in the 1850s (Emily Dickinson's Love Life). Her lady friendships, notably with schoolmate and sometime later sister-in-law Susan Huntington Gilbert and with their mutual friend Catherine Scott Turner Anthon, have also drawn interest with anyone observing Dickinson’s life, who argue whether their friendships represent just a normal kind of friendship or maybe something more resembling that of a sexual relationship (Emily Dickinson's Love Life). Biographers have attempted to find the main source for her intensity in her love poems, but no biographer has been able to identify specifically who the inspiration was for Dickinson's love poems (http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/ED303/emilybio.htm...
Emily Dickinson was a very unique and original writer. She’s very inspiring to me, as well to others. She was full of mystery and I think that’s why people are so interested in her, except the fact that she wrote wonderful, creative poetry. Her dark way of writing things make you think and keep wondering. Her poems will be such an inspiration, passed on from generation to generation.
Emily Dickinson is one of the most well known poets of her time. Though her life was outwardly uneventful, what went on inside her house behind closed doors is unbelievable. After her father died she met Reverend Charles Wadsworth. She soon came to regard him as one of her most trusted friends, and she created in his image the “lover'; whom she was never to know except in her imagination. It is also said that it was around 1812 when he was removed to San Fransico that she began her withdrawal from society. During this time she began to write many of her poems. She wrote mainly in private, guarding all of her poems from all but a few select friends. She did not write for fame, but instead as a way of expressing her feelings. In her lifetime only six of her poems were even printed; none of which had her consent. It was not until her death of Brights Disease in May of 1862, that many of her poems were even read (Chelsea House of Library Criticism 2837). Thus proving that the analysis on Emily Dickinson’s poetry is some of the most emotionally felt works of the nineteenth century.
Lawrence uses figurative language in order to present his ideas of societies expectations of a man. Lawrence changes the structure and style of “Snake” in order to highlight the struggles of the narrator. Specifically, when writing about the snake he uses repetitive and flowing words. He also uses traditional devices like alliteration, for example “and flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips.” The use of these technics gives the snake an almost human like feel that the reader can connect to. At the same time, Lawrence writes about the log used to hurt the snake in a different style creating such a contrast between the snake’s description and the log. The words describing the log are much different, “and threw it at the water trough with a clatter.” The changing styles helps emphasize the internal struggle the narrator is experiencing as he tries to figure out if he should do as society dictates and kill the snake like a man or do as he wishes and leave the snake in peace as his guest at the water
The main characteristic of Romanticism that Emily Dickinson portrays in her writing is the emphases of the importance of Nature to the Romantics. In most of her poems there is some mention or comparison to something found in Nature. In Poem 449, she refers to the moss that covers the names on the graves of the tombstones of “Beauty” and “Truth.” The Puritans believed Nature to be the realm of the devil. By including references to Nature in many of her poems, she was rebelling against the ideals of the Puritan upbringing she had hated so much.
In Mary Oliver’s poem “The Black Snake,” the narrator contemplates the cycle of life with the unpredictability of death. Mary Oliver’s work is “known for its natural themes and a continual affirmation of nature as a place of mystery and spirituality that holds the power to teach humans how to value one’s life and one’s place” (Riley). In the poem, The Black Snake, the narrator witnesses a black snake hit by a truck and killed on a road one morning. Feeling sympathy for the snake, the narrator stops, and removes the dead snake from the road. Noting the snake’s beauty, the narrator carries it from the road to some nearby bushes. Continuing to drive, the narrator reflects on how the abruptness of death ultimately revealed how the snake lived his life.
Ickstadt, Heinz. “Emily Dickinson’s Place in Literary History; or, the Public Function of a Private Poet.” The Emily Dickinson Journal 10.1 (2001): 55-68.
Reading a poem by Emily Dickinson can often lead the reader to a rather introspective state. Dickinson writes at length about the drastically transformative effect a book may have upon its’ reader. Alternating between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, Dickinson masterfully uses the ballad meter to tell a story about the ecstasy brought by reading. In poem number 1587, she writes about the changes wrought upon the reader by a book and the liberty literature brings.
One of Emily Dickinson’s greatest skills is taking the familiar and making it unfamiliar. In this sense, she reshapes how her readers view her subjects and the meaning that they have in the world. She also has the ability to assign a word to abstractness, making her poems seemingly vague and unclear on the surface. Her poems are so carefully crafted that each word can be dissected and the reader is able to uncover intense meanings and images. Often focusing on more gothic themes, Dickinson shows an appreciation for the natural world in a handful of poems. Although Dickinson’s poem #1489 seems disoriented, it produces a parallelism of experience between the speaker and the audience that encompasses the abstractness and unexpectedness of an event.
Dickinson's poetry is both thought provoking and shocking. This poem communicates many things about Dickinson, such as her cynical outlook on God, and her obsession with death. It is puzzling to me why a young lady such as Emily Dickinson would be so melancholy, since she seemed to have such a good life. Perhaps she just revealed in her poetry that dark side that most people try to keep hidden.
The consistent pattern of metrical stresses in this stanza, along with the orderly rhyme scheme, and standard verse structure, reflect the mood of serenity, of humankind in harmony with Nature. It is a fine, hot day, `clear as fire', when the speaker comes to drink at the creek. Birdsong punctuates the still air, like the tinkling of broken glass. However, the term `frail' also suggests vulnerability in the presence of danger, and there are other intimations in this stanza of the drama that is about to unfold. Slithery sibilants, as in the words `glass', `grass' and `moss', hint at the existence of a Serpent in the Garden of Eden. As in a Greek tragedy, the intensity of expression in the poem invokes a proleptic tenseness, as yet unexplained.
Throughout Emily Dickinson’s poetry there is a reoccurring theme of death and immortality. The theme of death is further separated into two major categories including the curiosity Dickinson held of the process of dying and the feelings accompanied with it and the reaction to the death of a loved one. Two of Dickinson’s many poems that contain a theme of death include: “Because I Could Not Stop For Death,” and “After great pain, a formal feeling comes.”