Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Literary analysis of emily dickinson 123helpme.com
Emily dickinson fascination with death
Emily dickinson fascination with death
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Literary analysis of emily dickinson 123helpme.com
Emily Dickinson is the epitome of the modern poet. Her poetry breaks from the traditional style with dashes to separate ideas. Dickinson, also, challenged the religious belief of her time. Growing up as a Puritan in Massachusetts, Emily Dickinson knew the bible, yet as an adult, she questioned that belief. Many of her poems seem focused on death; death of the body, death of the soul, death of the mind. Why was she so intrigued with death? The poems that embody this theme are: “Success is counted sweetest” (#112), “Safe in the Alabaster Chambers” (#124), “I like a look of Agony” (#339), “I felt a funeral in my brain” (#340), “Because I could not stop for death” (#479), and “I heard a Fly buzz-when I died” (#591). These poems seem to suggest that she struggled with the concept of mortality and eternity.
To understand Dickinson’s obsession about death one must consider her background. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, Emily was the youngest in a prominent family. Her father was a widely respected lawyer and later served as a state senator. Dickinson’s mother, on the other hand, was considered a religious woman who had a distant relationship with Emily. One source suggests that Emily’s mother suffered from depression. Considering that depression can be hereditary, this could explain Emily’s behavior as an adult. After spending a brief moment at Amherst Academy, she returned home where she stayed until her death. It is suggested that she lived her life as a recluse but that theory is debatable. Dickinson had many love interest including Benjamin Newton, Samuel Bowles, Reverend Charles Wadsworth, and it is suggested that she had a love interest in Susan Gilbert Dickinson. Even though she had many men in her life, Emily and ...
... middle of paper ...
...ity in nature, which is why many of her poems conflict with each concept.
Works Cited
Cullina, Alice. Chainani, Soman ed. *Emily Dickinson's Collected Poems Summary*. GradeSaver, 26 July 2009 Web. 26 March 2011.
"Emily Dickinson Biography." Famous Poets and Poems - Read and Enjoy Poetry. Web. 26 Mar. 2011. .
"Emily Dickinson." The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. 7th ed. Vol. C. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007. 74-88. Print.
Ferlazzo, Paul J. "Chapter 3: This Mortal Life." Emily Dickinson. Paul J. Ferlazzo. Boston: Twayne, 1976. Twayne's United States Authors Series 280. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Mar. 2011.
Melani. "Emily Dickinson: An Oerview." Emily Dickinson. 24 Feb. 2009. Web. 26 Mar. 2011. .
“Although Emily Dickinson is known as one of America’s best and most beloved poets, her extraordinary talent was not recognized until after her death” (Kort 1). Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she spent most of her life with her younger sister, older brother, semi-invalid mother, and domineering father in the house that her prominent family owned. As a child, she was curious and was considered a bright student and a voracious reader. She graduated from Amherst Academy in 1847, and attended a female seminary for a year, which she quitted as she considered that “’I [she] am [was] standing alone in rebellion [against becoming an ‘established Christian’].’” (Kort 1) and was homesick. Afterwards, she excluded herself from having a social life, as she took most of the house’s domestic responsibilities, and began writing; she only left Massachusetts once. During the rest of her life, she wrote prolifically by retreating to her room as soon as she could. Her works were influenced ...
Emily Dickinson was one of the greatest woman poets. She left us with numerous works that show us her secluded world. Like other major artists of nineteenth-century American introspection such as Emerson, Thoreau, and Melville, Dickinson makes poetic use of her vacillations between doubt and faith. The style of her first efforts was fairly conventional, but after years of practice she began to give room for experiments. Often written in the meter of hymns, her poems dealt not only with issues of death, faith and immortality, but with nature, domesticity, and the power and limits of language.
Homans, Margaret. “’Oh, Vision of Language’: Dickinson’s Poems of Love and Death.” Feminist Critics Read Emily Dickinson. Ed. Suzanne Juhasz. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1983. 114-33.
Emily Dickinson, who achieved more fame after her death, is said to be one of the greatest American poets of all time. Dickinson communicated through letters and notes and according to Amy Paulson Herstek, author of “Emily Dickinson: Solitary and Celebrated Poet,” “Writing was the way she kept in touch with the world” (15). Dickinson’s style is unique and although unconventional, it led to extraordinary works of literature. Dickinson lived her life in solitude, but in her solitude she was free to read, write and think which led to her nonconformity and strong sense of individualism. Suzanne Juhasz, a biographer of Dickinson, sums up most critics’ idea of Dickinson ideally: “Emily Dickinson is at once the most intimate of poets, and the most guarded. The most self-sufficient, and the neediest. The proudest, and the most vulnerable. These contradictions, which we as her readers encounter repeatedly in her poems, are understandable, not paradoxical, for they result from the tension between the life to which she was born and the one to which she aspired” (1). Dickinson poured her heart and soul into over 1,700
In conclusion, it can be stated the examples of Emily Dickinson's work discussed in this essay show the poetess to be highly skilled in the use of humor and irony. The use of these two tools in her poems is to stress a point or idea the poetess is trying to express, rather than being an end in themselves. These two tools allow her to present serious critiques of her society and the place she feels she has been allocated into by masking her concerns in a light-hearted, irreverent tone.
Emily Dickinson's Obsession with Death. Emily Dickinson became legendary for her preoccupation with death. All her poems contain stanzas focusing on loss or loneliness, but the most striking ones talk particularly about death, specifically her own death and her own afterlife. Her fascination with the morose gives her poems a rare quality, and gives us insight into a mind we know very little about. What we do know is that Dickinson’s father left her a small amount of money when she was young.
Emily Dickinson is one of the great visionary poets of nineteenth century America. In her lifetime, she composed more poems than most modern Americans will even read in their lifetimes. Dickinson is still praised today, and she continues to be taught in schools, read for pleasure, and studied for research and criticism. Since she stayed inside her house for most of her life, and many of her poems were not discovered until after her death, Dickinson was uninvolved in the publication process of her poetry. This means that every Dickinson poem in print today is just a guess—an assumption of what the author wanted on the page. As a result, Dickinson maintains an aura of mystery as a writer. However, this mystery is often overshadowed by a more prevalent notion of Dickinson as an eccentric recluse or a madwoman. Of course, it is difficult to give one label to Dickinson and expect that label to summarize her entire life. Certainly she was a complex woman who could not accurately be described with one sentence or phrase. Her poems are unique and quite interestingly composed—just looking at them on the page is pleasurable—and it may very well prove useful to examine the author when reading her poems. Understanding Dickinson may lead to a better interpretation of the poems, a better appreciation of her life’s work. What is not useful, however, is reading her poems while looking back at the one sentence summary of Dickinson’s life.
Dickinson, Emily. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. Thomas H. Johnson. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1960.
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on 10th December, 1830, in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts. As a young child, she showed a bright intelligence, and was able to create many recognizable writings. Many close friends and relatives in Emily’s life were taken away from her by death. Living a life of simplicity and aloofness, she wrote poetry of great power: questioning the nature of immortality and death. Although her work was influenced by great poets of the time, she published many strong poems herself. Two of Emily Dickinson’s famous poems, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” and “I Heard a Fly Buzz- When I Died”, are both about life’s one few certainties, death, and that is where the similarities end.
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.
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.
The theme of death is the most prevalent theme throughout all of Emily Dickinson’s poems. According to literary critic Anna Priddy, “Emily Dickinson is often characterized as a poet
Hoefel, Roseanne L. "The Complete Poems Of Emily Dickinson." Masterplots, Fourth Edition (2010): 1-6. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 17 Nov. 2013.
Dickinson, Emily. “The last Night that She lived.” Literature. 5th ed. Ed. Robert DiYanni. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002. 843.
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.”