An Explication of Emily Dickinson's Loaded Gun Essays

The large amount of poems in Dickinson’s collection containing the theme of death is impossible to be overlooked. Approximately one-third from her entire collection speaks about the subject, something that for many decades has intrigued fans and scholars alike. In order to understand this fixation, one must study the poet’s upbringing and religious conflicts, which are unequivocally at the center of this fascination with the theme of death.

She then goes on to use many literary devices to enhance the meaning of her poetry; two of the main devices that are in use are Personification, and imagery. With Dickinson’s astounding word play and her personal experiences, she establishes her feelings towards life and death in 3 stanzas. “Afraid? Of whom am I afraid, not death; for who is he? (Dickinson 608)”, being the first part of the stanza opens the poem

In Dickinson's "My Life Had Stood—A Loaded Gun", I interpreted the poem literally, thinking the poem was really about a gun and the relationship with its owner. But as I read the poem more and more, I felt the power and rage engulfed into this piece. I also gathered that, like most of Dickinson's poetry,

The poem “Taking off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes” By Billy Collins, amplifies the conflict of Emily Dickinson’s inner feelings being revealed as a result of her poetry being published (Emily Dickinson wanted to keep her poetry private). The speaker is aware of this and he shows a lot respect for Dickinson and her poetry throughout the poem. Respect is shown by the speaker by constantly referring to Dickinson’s poems. The speaker references Dickinson’s work in a way that is easily noticed. The speaker preserves Dickinson’s more complex thoughts and feelings.

We see that Dickinson’s poems take a sense of homilies and several quaint morality questioning

In completing a joint reading of Emily Dickinson’s poetry and Heinrich Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House, readers are exposed to a multitude of ideas which both complement and contrast one another, namely that of the role of women within society, specifically in the nineteenth century, and desire and, within the concept of desire, the universal dichotomy of longing and belonging. Dickinson explores these concepts in much of her poetry, but for the purposes of this essay, three will be analysed and discussed. “This is my letter to the World”, within which Dickinson explores the vastness of the world and her place within it, as well as her fellow “countrymen”; “I had been hungry, all the Years”, which considers the nature of female desire and longing;

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) and Walt Whitman (1819-1892) are both considered as founder of the modern American literature. The essay will be focused on an extract of the Chant 33 from the 1881 edition of “Song of Myself”. In “Song of Myself” we see that Whitman wants to combine the democracy and the individual but in his 1855 's preface, he advocates simplicity: “Nothing is better than simplicity.”1 This essay will also analysed the poem 668 extracted from The Complete Poems Of Emily Dickinson published in 1975. So the poem studied here is:“ 'Nature ' is what we see”. Most of her poems deal with death, religion, immortality and nature. In the poem 668 with see how the speaker is in awe of the nature all around her.

Emily Dickinson is an exceptional poet so much so that it is extremely difficult to place her in any single tradition she seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Her poetic form, with her customary four-line stanzas, ABCB rhyme schemes, and alternations in iambic meter between tetrameter and trimeter, is derived from Psalms and Protestant hymns, but Dickinson so thoroughly appropriates the forms interposing her own long, rhythmic dashes designed to interrupt the meter and indicate short pauses that the resemblance seems quite faint. Her subjects are often parts of the topography of her own psyche; she explores her own feelings with painstaking and often painful honesty but never loses sight of their universal poetic application;

Emily Dickinson did not reach her full potential as a poet until the 1860’s. Before her thirtieth birthday is when Emily Dickinson decided to never leave her home again. The decision, stated by Theodora Ward, was “clearly reflected in the letters after 1860” (Ward). Emily Dickinson’s poem My Life Had Stood – A Loaded Gun was written circa 1862, just two years after her decision to never leave her home again. This poem incorporates the theme of death; but it a different context. Dickinson does not refer to death as the powerful main focus, but moreover the ability to die. In the second stanza, the focus shifts from a gun as the main subject of the poem to Dickinson using the term “We” to become the voice and guardian of the master. The gun serves as a symbol for the relationship between life and death, and while the gun can outlive its master; it really never lives at all without the power to die. If Dickinson spoke about death in this context, could she be in a manic depression in which she cares no longer to live? (Ward)

Dickinson is considered one of America’s most active poets, writing nearly 1,8000 poems about art, gardens, nature, joy, love, death and grief in a way that almost takes a strong hold on the reader's mind. Unlike that of Whitman, Dickinson accepted the limitations of rhyme and meter and worked endless variations on one basic pattern. Instead of democratized wording, she constructed for herself a set of aristocratic images and stayed at home to examine small fragments of the world she knew rather than travel like Whitman. Still, the intent to make her poems private leaves the reader attempting to analyze and understand the inward-looking she incorporates. This is due to the fact that Dickinson had a habit of recording the impressions of experience

“Best Things dwell out of Sight';(#998) describes one of America’s greatest poets. She dwelled out of sight for most of her life and her poems, with the exception of seven published anonymously, remained out of sight until well after her death. Many literary scholars have attempted a biography on this mysterious woman and poet and yet none are conclusive. Dickinson remains an enigma even today but biographical speculation allows us to analyze some of her poetry even though we may be completely inaccurate about what we presuppose.

The two most important lines of the poem are “Tell all the truth but tell it slant -” (line 1) and “Or every man be blind -” (line 8). These are the first and last lines in the poem, as well as the only two lines that end with a dash. I believe that these two lines combined form the complete message that Dickinson is trying to convey through the form of a cause and an effect. That is how telling the truth is a great thing, but too much of the truth will just burden people. All of the lines between those two are Dickinson’s poetic explanation of her main statement.

Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s I dwell in Possibility (No. 657) and The Soul selects her own Society (No. 303)

To begin, the first stanza introduces the woman and further establishes the setting. A simile is used to introduce a woman who is being admired by other men, “As a white stone draws down the fish/ she on the seafloor of the afternoon/ draws down men’s glances and their cruel wish/ for love” (1). The woman is representing the white stone which draws the attention of the fish, who represent men. However, the ‘white stone’ that represents the woman is ironic because the color white usually implies innocence and purity, which is the opposite of the woman represented

The objectification of women is portrayed through the imagery in the poem which can also play out as a symbol. For instance, in the first stanza, the first few lines describe women as support for men: