Emily Dickinson's God

3043 Words7 Pages

Emily Dickinson's God

Works Cited Not Included

God, to Emily Dickinson, is seen in more than a church or a cathedral.

God is seen in her poems in relationship to such themes as nature and

the individual existence. These thematic ties are seen in such poems

as "It might be lonelier," and "Some keep the Sabbath going to

church."

"Some keep the Sabbath going to Church" consists of the differences

that exist between Dickinson's way of being close to God and many

other people's ways of being close to God. While some may go to church

every Sunday in honor of the Sabbath, Dickinson stays home and

reflects. "A bobolink" is her "Chorister" and instead of a clergyman

preaching, "God preaches" (Hillman 36). Dickinson believes she can

find God on her own, without the assistance of a preacher or such.

Nature, to Dickinson, is the equivalent of a chapel, its congregation,

its clergyman, and its choir. Rica Brenner, a critic, wrote that she

believed, "Nature, for Emily Dickinson, was the means for the

enjoyment of the senses," (Brenner 288). Dickinson finds God, in the

fullest sense, in nature. She does not feel as if a church would

really convey the full affect of God, at least not to her. "The Sunday

God of New England Orthodoxy, distant, awful, cruelly stern, was not

for her," (Brenner 274).

Dickinson, though she progressively conveys a disdain for the church

and its idea of God in her poems, cares for people and nature. She

values them above most other things and sees God in them. It can even

be said that she rejects the church in the name of God, nature, and

the human race, in addition to doing it in the name of her own sanity.

Ric...

... middle of paper ...

...d, his life

was rare, and his paradise held infinite beauties for those who

achieved it. On the other hand, he could be made of flint," (Farr 67).

This implies that Dickinson believed in God, just in case there really

was a heaven. True, she most likely wouldn't have sacrificed if she

didn't think she was going to go to heaven, but she believed in God,

and he was not in her own image. If she did create God in her own

image, she would have understood better what she believed about him.

Instead, she was always wrestling with the quest for who God was and

if he even existed at all.

The question as to what Dickinson's view of God is never definitively

answered in her poetry. As the reader discovers what Dickinson

believes about God, the speaker discovers as well. God remains a

mystery in the poems of Emily Dickinson.

Show More
Related

  • Challenges to Male Authority in Sophocles’ play, Antigone

    1137 Words  | 3 Pages

    the gods. She believed that the law of the gods, which dictates that a body be given

    Read More

  • Christian Teachings about the Relationship between Humanity and the Rest of Creation

    1518 Words  | 4 Pages

    humans who are doing the most damage to the world we live on today and

    Read More

  • Hume And Descartes On The Theory Of Ideas

    614 Words  | 2 Pages

    the mind could gain an idea about God, but instead, humans could think about God

    Read More

  • One World, Many Colors: The Continuous Battle with Racism

    648 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...p away, she is not. Instead, she uses it as a motivation to make this world a better place for the future.

    Read More

  • The Crucible: Is Abigail Williams Responsible For Murder?

    355 Words  | 1 Pages

    is responsible for the innocent people that have been executed because she lied, and she is Ungodly.

    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: Life and Literature

    1064 Words  | 3 Pages

    The life led by Emily Dickinson was one secluded from the outside world, but full of color and light within. During her time she was not well known, but as time progressed after her death more and more people took her works into consideration and many of them were published. Dickinson’s life was interesting in its self, but the life her poems held, changed American Literature. Emily Dickinson led a unique life that emotionally attached her to her writing and the people who would read them long after she died.

    Read More

  • Fate And Free Will In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

    1674 Words  | 4 Pages

    In works based on the Christian religion God is often portrayed as all-knowing and all-powerful. This is how God is portrayed

    Read More

  • Emily Dickinson

    539 Words  | 2 Pages

    Recognized for experimenting with poetry, Emily Dickinson is said to be one of the greatest American poets. Her work was an amazing success even after being published four years after her death in 1890. Eleven editions of Dickinson’s work were published in less than two years. Emily Dickenson’s personal life, literary influences and romantic sufferings were the main inspirations for her poetry.

    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

  • Examples Of Feminism In The Crucible

    2620 Words  | 6 Pages

    for herself because she was never taught to fight back. In the end, she was forced to switch side

    Read More

  • Emily Dickinson

    1559 Words  | 4 Pages

    Emily Dickinson lived in an era of Naturalism and Realism (1855-1910). She lived in a period of The Civil War and the Frontier. She was affected by her life and the era she lived in. She also had many deaths in her family and that’s part of the reason that she was very morbid and wrote about death.

    Read More

  • Dickinson and Her religion

    1059 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Emily Dickinson

    876 Words  | 2 Pages

    Emily Dickinson was a woman who lived in times that are more traditional; her life experiences influence and help us to understand the dramatic and poetic lines in her writing. Although Dickinson’s poetry can often be defined as sad and moody, we can find the use of humor and irony in many of her poems. By looking at the humor and sarcasm found in three of Dickinson’s poems, "Success Is Counted Sweetest", "I am Nobody", and "Some keep the Sabbath Going to Church", one can examine each poem show how Dickinson used humor and irony for the dual purposes of comic relief and to stress an idea or conclusion about her life and the environment in the each poem.

    Read More

  • Emily Dickinson

    1012 Words  | 3 Pages

    Breaking news revealing the truth about Emily Dickinson’s life has recently been uncovered. For the past hundred-plus years literary historians believed Dickinson to be a plain and quiet type of person who did not communicate with the public for most of her life. Her romanticism poetry drew attention from fellow literary legends. After corresponding with the well-known Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who showed interest in her work but advised her not to publish it, she became defiant to publish any of her work.

    Read More

More about Emily Dickinson's God

Open Document