Summary Of The Brain Is Deeper Than The Sea By Emily Dickinson

934 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: emily dickinson analysis of poems

any scholars shudder at the idea of dissecting any of the simple, yet strikingly complex, poems of the great American author Emily Dickinson. When a reader first views one of the multitudes of Dickinson’s texts, their first response is one of simplicity. Due to the length of her poetry, many people believe that they will turn out to be simple. Yet, once someone begins to read one of Emily Dickinson’s poems, it does not take long to realize the utter complexity of the text. As said by Wiggins, author of Prentice Hall’s, American Experience Volume 1, “Dickinson’s poetry was printed as she had meant it to be read, and the world experienced the power of her complex mind captured in concrete imagery and simple but forceful language.” Through this, …show more content…

Dickinson depicts human understanding as something boundless and unlimited in her poem by stating, “The Brain is deeper than the sea-.” An educated reader will first point out the fact that the word, brain, is capitalized. In doing this, Dickinson shows that she is referring to something more than just an ordinary organ in a body, but is in fact referencing the human mind. In this passage she is stating that the human mind can store vast amounts of information. This idea is supported by modern thinkers such as Forrest Wickman, who, in an article published by Slate, states that the human brain has a capacity equal to, “ 100 trillion data points, or about 100 terabytes of information.” Through this quote, Wickman is agreeing with Dickinson 's idea that the human brain can hold a vast amount of …show more content…

The idea that human understanding is boundless is depicted through the lines, “The Soul selects her own society-.” Through these lines, Dickinsons is expressing an idea that human choose their friends metaphysically, or with the use of our minds and souls. This is supported in a way by Amy C., who states, “Studies show we choose friends that we cross paths with regularly.” This is in agreement with the ideas of Dickinson because it shows that humans befriend those who they are around the most, but they do not do it by using their brain and considering this, but instead it happens metaphysically, or as many people sometimes say, “without us even knowing.” This clearly shows the idea that human understanding is both boundless and unlimited through the idea that we can choose friends without the use of our physical

Show More
Related

  • Analysis of Emily Dickinson´s We Grow Accustomed to the Dark and Robert Frost´s Acquainted with the Night

    876 Words  | 2 Pages

    Dickinson has strong imagery, distinct structure, and a point of view that presents the concern related to darkness. Starting with “we,” Dickinson allows the reader to share the same feeling of nervousness as the author by entering into the unknown that the darkness brings together. Darkness is something one must alter

    Read More

  • Emily Dickinson's Fascicle 17

    2582 Words  | 6 Pages

    ...Dickinson has for the most part conquered her fears. As the second poem gave us the unsettling idea that the author of the poem we were reading was afraid to compose poetry, this poem shows us her coming to terms with that. Her list of creatures blessed with wonders they had not dared to hope for extends quite naturally to include her. She has come to her “Heaven” through poetry—“unexpected”, but eventually with confidence brought about by the trials dealt with throughout the fascicle. The poems are very closely linked, each one showing us some new aspect of Dickinson’s personality that leads toward her confidence. Finally, Dickinson has found her voice and in this final poem proclaims that she has found a peace to which she had not dared aspire at the beginning. Now she has both nature and poetry within her grasp—this is “Heaven” and “Old Home” all at once.

    Read More

  • Free Essays: Impact of the Word on Dickinson

    552 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Donald E. Thackrey’s essay "The Communication of the Word," he talks about how "the power of the individual word, in particular, seems to have inspired her with nothing less than reverence" (51). Dickinson approached her poetry inductively, that is, she combined words to arrive at whatever conclusion the patterns of the words suggested, rather than starting out with a specific theme or message. Instead of purposefully working toward a final philosophical point, Dickinson preferred to use series of "staccato" inspirations (51). Dickinson frequently used words with weight in her work, and as a result her works usually cannot be grasped fully in one reading without dissecting each word individually. Often Dickinson would compile large, alternative word lists for a poetry before she would come to a decision on which word was "just right" for the impact she wished to achieve (52). For example, this poem displays Dickinson’s use of alternative, thesaurus-like lists:

    Read More

  • Emily Dickinson Poems Analysis Essay

    611 Words  | 2 Pages

    The very first line proclaims the intense metaphor of books sustaining life. By equating words to food, or something worthy of consumption, Dickinson creates an idea of literature essential to the continuation of human life. The capitalization of the word “Words” lends itself to the idea of words as their own entity, and as something with more substance than merely the words themselves. Continuing to the next line, the theme of words as food persists. The connotations of the word robust are most commonly well-fed and vigorous, so the point the narrator makes is the nourishment of the spirit can only literature can facilitate. By

    Read More

  • Emily Dickinson

    2043 Words  | 5 Pages

    (In these lines Dickinson doubts the sense of religious claims about life, death and life after death). Her cryptic language thus became part of her search for truth and personal clarification. She couched her poetry in ambiguous, complex and multi-layered language - in this form it became both a defence, and a game. The riddles concealed her anarchy, her dissension and her audaciousness in questioning the status quo. She achieved her most audacious commentaries and attacks on American perceptions and values through riddle and ruse; by ellipsis, dodge, a vague daring, an evident superiority of language and idea, staying virtually unknown . The ambiguities in the riddles were her defence against authority, religious tyranny and "norm" thinking.

    Read More

  • Emily Dickinson and Her Poetry

    3199 Words  | 7 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Emily Dickinson

    1277 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Nature of Death in Emily Dickinson's Poems

    2260 Words  | 5 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Dickinson and Her religion

    1059 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Emily Dickinson 1489 Analysis

    1304 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • “Because I could not stop for Death” and “Annabel Lee”: Similarities, Differences, and Their Authors

    1506 Words  | 4 Pages

    “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 ...

    Read More

  • Emily Dickinson's Capitalization and Punctuation

    1263 Words  | 3 Pages

    Porter, David T. The Art of Emily Dickinson’s Early Poetry. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966. Print.

    Read More

  • Emily Dickinson's Use of Humor and Irony

    1318 Words  | 3 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • The Reality of Death in Emily Dickinson's Poem, I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died

    2676 Words  | 6 Pages

    Wilner, Eleanor. "The Poetics of Emily Dickinson." JSTOR. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Web. 4 June 2015.

    Read More

  • The Nobody Who Became a Somebody

    785 Words  | 2 Pages

    Kennedy, X. J.. "Two Critical Casebooks: Critics on Emily Dickinson." An introduction to poetry. 13 ed. Boston: Little, Brown, 1966. 343-344. Print.

    Read More

More about Summary Of The Brain Is Deeper Than The Sea By Emily Dickinson

Open Document