Emily Dickinson Interpretation

The Beauty of Interpretation

The deeper aspects of life that are a part of humanity are often the most difficult to discern, therefore they are even harder to depict with words. Topics such as death, greed, envy, and poverty are discussed in poems by Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, and Maya Angelou, which use allegory to decipher the meaning behind these inevitable human traits. It is through the use of this literary device that the intended audience is able to capture the raw feelings and notions of such subjects contained by the author. The allegories used in I Could Not Stop For Death by Emily Dickinson, Fire and Ice, by Robert Frost, and Harlem Hopscotch by Maya Angelou perfectly depict how homologous death can be to diurnal life.

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Many of Dickinson’s poems revolve around the idea of one’s demise and the aftermath that comes with it. According to Britannica, Dickinson’s poetry was influenced a lot by her religious beliefs, which explains her deliberate use of allegorical symbolism, “[Emily Dickinson] retained a belief in the soul’s immortality...One reason her mature religious views elude specification is that she took no interest in creedal or definition.” (“Emily Dickinson” 1) Her eerie style of writing is attributed to her uncertainty of death, which she can only define and describe with words and ideas pertaining to the living world. Dickinson seems serenely reflective through her use of euphonious diction although she is describing her journey to death, she doesn’t use harsh words, instead she paints the event as if it were a diurnal thing, forcing the reader to look for a deeper connection in order to successfully discern the meaning behind the poem. If her poem was to be read in a literal perspective, it would lack common sense, for example, “the horses’ heads were toward eternity” (Arp 742) cannot be read and understood literally, therefore the reader is forced to dig for an allegorical approach to the quote, discovering that this quote in particular is talking about how the carriage is headed to wherever it is that the dead

He was very particular with the style in which he wrote. According to Britannica, most of his poetry includes rhyme and his meters were arranged a in specific manner, “he was a poet of traditional verse forms and metrics.” (“Robert Frost” 1) Frost seemed to have calculated all of his poems in order for them to come out in a specific format. Along with the layout of his poetry, he also made sure to add ”layers of ambiguity and irony,” to give them a deeper connection to life. (“Poet Robert Frost” 1) Robert Frost calculatedly wrote Fire and Ice and purposefully incorporated allegory as the perfect device to disclose the immorality of human traits, in which he