What Are The Similarities Between Emily Dickinson And Edgar Allan Poe

American authors thrived in the 19th century more than any other time in history. Two central figures of this American Renaissance were Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allen Poe. These two authors primarily wrote dark fiction about the subjects of death, love, and nature. Not only is the general subject matter between Dickinson and Poe similar, but there are also parallels between their speakers. Many of their works contain a first-person narrator who displays drastic psychological states and is aware of an overwhelming presence of death. This is most notable in Dickinson’s “I Felt a Funeral” when her speaker implies with the internal funeral that she is becoming mad and how in “Because I could not stop for Death” she shows mortality as imminent;

The speaker connects a symbol of death with her brain and says her “mind is going numb,” which implies that a part of her is dying (Dickinson 8). At the end of the poem, the speaker also states “a plank in reason broke / and I dropped down and down” (Dickinson 17-18). The statement of an interruption of logic followed by her descent is a hopeless ending that shows the speaker is losing her rationality and declining mentally. Dickinson portrays a speaker who is dying physcologically and thus is becoming mad. In addition, “I Felt a Funeral,” characterizes death as forcefully acting upon the speaker beyond her control, much like it is in her poem “Because I could not stop for Death.” In the former, Dickinson does not demonstrate the funeral and the downturn as stoppable or preventable, and in the latter she unsuccessfully avoids death. The opening lines “Because I could not stop for Death / He kindly stopped for me” shows the speaker did not want to give up her earthly life (Dickinson 1-2). Though the figure of death treated her politely, it is clear that the presence of death was unavoidable, as it was in the previous poem.

Though these authors looked like twins lived during the same era, examining their literature demonstrates that they had little influence on one another. The parallels between Dickinson and Poe include their dark Romantic subject matter, though Dickinson is considered a Modernist, and their use of first-person narrators who display drastic psychological states under the presence of death. Aside from these indistinct similarities, they have many differences in how they write about life and death. In “Because I could not stop for Death,” Dickinson characterizes mortality as a guide to the afterlife, while Poe portrays death as intimidating in “The Tell-Tale Heart” and like a thief in “Annabel Lee.” In addition to this, Poe’s illustration of nature in “The Raven” is also darker than Dickinson’s view in “Nature is what we see.” Dickinson believes nature is godlike and shows more of a Romantic view of nature than Poe, who uses symbols of birds to connect the outdoors with mortality. When considering these works, Poe is a more dark, Anti-Transcendentalist writer compared to Dickinson. Further, he writes short stories and poems that horrify the reader while Dickinson writes dynamic, unorthodox poetry that is difficult to compare to other writers. The eccentric minds of these authors is ultimately expressed in their provocative literature that continues to influence writers