The Poet Emily Dickinson is a master of compression. She gracefully packages deep truths in just a handful of words. This is demonstrated in the poem, “We grow accustomed to the dark”. The last line which states, “and life steps almost straight”, is particular captivating because of the philosophical weight it and all simple, elegant truths carry. The multiple facets of the human condition, namely growth, conflict, and aspiration, can be used to ascertain the multiple layers of meaning contained in Emily Dickinson’s phrase “Life Steps almost Straight” (Line 20) Moving forward, conflict is a political source of deeper understanding, therefore it sustains that journey to truth. In His Work, “The Examined Life”, Cornel west introduces the idea that, because of the elusive nature of truth, it becomes more important to continuously move closer to truth than to actually grasp it (West ine 15-25). Essentially, this is a philosophical way to arrive at the age old saying “the journey is more important than the destination”, Perhaps, this is another layer of meaning of Emily Dickinson’s phrase “Life steps almost straight”. The way life moves forward i emphasized over in what …show more content…
:The condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak” (The examined life, 14-15). The condition of truth, much like the condition of humanity, evolves. It can be visible, and yet elusive, as the nature of smoke. West refers to this as a “certain kind of mystery” that surrounds truth. (The examined Life, 20). This confrontation leads to a deeper understanding of oneself, and understanding that can be applied to furthering th understanding of oneself, and understanding that can be applied to furthering the understanding concerning the rest of humanity as well. In essence, the interpretation of the phrase “Life steps almost straight”. Leads to the conclusion that conflict is the catalyst of understand, and of influences much of the velocity of
The speaker in “Five A.M.” looks to nature as a source of beauty during his early morning walk, and after clearing his mind and processing his thoughts along the journey, he begins his return home feeling as though he is ready to begin the “uphill curve” (ln. 14) in order to process his daily struggles. However, while the speaker in “Five Flights Up,” shares the same struggles as her fellow speaker, she does little to involve herself in nature other than to observe it from the safety of her place of residence. Although suffering as a result of her struggles, the speaker does little to want to help herself out of her situation, instead choosing to believe that she cannot hardly bare recovery or to lift the shroud of night that has fallen over her. Both speakers face a journey ahead of them whether it be “the uphill curve where a thicket spills with birds every spring” (ln. 14-15) or the five flights of stares ahead of them, yet it is in their attitude where these two individuals differ. Through the appreciation of his early morning surroundings, the speaker in “Five A.M.” finds solitude and self-fulfillment, whereas the speaker in “Five Flights Up” has still failed to realize her own role in that of her recovery from this dark time in her life and how nature can serve a beneficial role in relieving her of her
Emily describes a relaxing slow pace towards an unknown destination. On the way, she enjoys the peaceful scenes. “We passed the school, where children strove, At recess – In the Ring-“(Dickinson 9-10). Emily is reflecting on her past, this may also be seen as the beginning of a life cycle. Emily then goes on to say, We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain (11).
Approaching Emily Dickinson’s poetry as one large body of work can be an intimidating and overwhelming task. There are obvious themes and images that recur throughout, but with such variation that seeking out any sense of intention or order can feel impossible. When the poems are viewed in the groupings Dickinson gave many of them, however, possible structures are easier to find. In Fascicle 17, for instance, Dickinson embarks upon a journey toward confidence in her own little world. She begins the fascicle writing about her fear of the natural universe, but invokes the unknowable and religious as a means of overcoming that fear throughout her life and ends with a contextualization of herself within both nature and eternity.
Great poetry is thought to never be fully understood by readers and even by those that devout their career and time to being experts on it. People can spend countless hours analyzing a poem, but may never fully understand exactly what the author was writing about. Readers must both compare and contrast different works and prior knowledge to draw conclusions about poetic pieces. In Emily Dickinson’s poem written in 1862, first published in 1935, “We grow accustomed to the Dark“, and Robert Frost’s 1927 poem, “Acquainted with the Night”, the two poems both convey the unrelenting darkness and night in the world. Although, Frost has often times written about the beauty of nature in his poems, if you take a close look, there can be a dark connotation
The poetic work penned by Emily Dickinson is often viewed cryptically mainly due to the aspects of less punctuation and presence of destructive language that aligns imagery. For the purpose of analysis, the poem selected is Dickinson’s 754, ‘My Life has Stood – A Loaded Gun’ which was published in 1999. The poem has eluded critics and the interpretation of this work was carried out in a number of ways including frontier romanticism and a spirituality expression. On the other hand, the poem is underpinned with an extensive metaphor, in the light of which the life of the speaker becomes a loaded gun. The beginning of the poem depicts a typical American scene with the existence of a gun, a hunter, and a trip to the woods for hunting. The poem
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.
Emily Dickinson was a polarizing author whose love live has intrigued readers for many years. Her catalog consists of many poems and stories but the one thing included in the majority of them is love. It is documented that she was never married but yet love is a major theme in a vast amount of her poetry. Was there a person that she truly loved but never had the chance to pursue? To better understand Emily Dickinson, one must look at her personal life, her poems, and her diction.
Poetry is defined as literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm whether collectively or as a genre of literature. I chose to do all three poems by the one of our four great American poets, Emily Dickinson. The poems I have chosen to are, “Because I could not stop for death”, “Success is counted sweetest”, and “Triumph may be of several kinds”. The theme of each individual poem and its true interpreted meaning will be the focus of this paper.
In Emily Dickinson’s poem #336, the narrator feels a strong sense of despair and laments at having lost the physical ability to see in one eye. The narrator reflects upon the importance of sight in experiencing nature and finds a better appreciation for it now that she has lost her sight. By the end of the poem however, the narrator experiences transcendence, as she comes to the realization that through the act of imagination she is able to see far more than the limited view her eyes provided her with. Through the act of poetic writing, the narrator is able to capture the beauty of nature and engrave in into her soul. In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s excerpt from “Nature”, he alludes to the significance in sight when it comes to it being able to merge the human soul with nature to create perfect unity, and as such he lays the groundwork for Dickinson’s ideas that are presented within her poem. Though Dickinson’s poem may initially seem transcendental, it can also be interpreted as a mixture of Emerson’s transcendental ideas and those that support the notion of imagination. Dickinson’s poem serves as a response to Emerson’s ideas because she adds on to his thoughts and unites his idea that there is oneness present in the world with the notion that imagination and sight serve as a bridge that connects human consciousness with nature to create this oneness that Emerson believes in.
to “grow accustomed to” (Dickinson 1). Darkness leaves the reader feeling “uncertain” in the beginning, but our uncertainty turns into bravery as Dickinson’s
Analysis of "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" by Emily Dickinson. The poets of the nineteenth century wrote on a variety of topics. One often used topic is that of death. The theme of death has been approached in many different ways to do it.
Excellent literature often leads to a deep involvement that can cause the reader to no longer be aware of their surroundings. In this poem, the subject gains much from the literature, forgetting that he is poor and malnourished. This forgetting of his state of being continues in the next line, which states that he did not remember that “his frame was dust” (4). Once again, the theme of literature transforming the body as if it were nourishment reappears. The capitalization of the word “dust” significantly changes the meaning. In the Bible, God created humanity of dust and returns humanity to dust when a person dies. In capitalizing dust, Dickinson says that this man is dying, returning to dust. This is also the first evidence of a rhyme scheme in the poem, with the rhyme of robust and
One of Emily Dickinson’s poems, formally titled “The feet of people walking home,” is of some interest in its own merit. Unlike some of Dickinson’s other poems, such as the ones that exist among other versions due to a few dissimilarities, this poem is duplicated verbatim. To the untrained eye, this triviality would often be overlooked, were it not for the fact that Emily Dickinson had not intended on publishing many of her poems. Why, then, did she duplicate this poem? Perhaps a more in-depth analysis of the poem, as well as the current events in Dickinson’s life, would answer this query. Estimated to have been written in the year 1858, the poem begins its first stanza by conveying the emotions of gaiety and joyfulness, which are associated with passage to heaven. A much more somber note pervades the second stanza, in which Dickinson uses metaphors to compare the entrance to heaven with the act of theft. The third stanza combines the previous two by hinting at the theory that those who are already in heaven do not want more people entering heaven’s gates, because that would diminish the high status that heaven and angels hold.
Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost talk about the power of nature in their poetry. Frost and Dickinson have reasonable evidence on why human beings should live life to their own agenda but, what if that person cannot stop living somebody else's dreams? How can these poems help people break away from society and become a strong, confident individual? In these poems the authors make a bold statement or display punctuation to describe the mood and tone of the poetry.
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.