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Analysis My Life Had Stood a Loaded Gun Essay

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Emily Dickinson is a poet known for her cryptic, confusing language. Words are often put together in an unusual way and create deciphering difficulties for the reader. But behind all the confusion is a hidden meaning that becomes clear, and one realizes that all the odd word choices were chosen for a specific reason. The poem I will try to analyze is My Life Had Stood—A Loaded Gun, or number 754. I find this to be one of her most difficult poems to decode. However, I find the images fascinating and the last stanza very confusing but intriguing. What I first thought the poem was about and what I finally came to a conclusion on are two completely different thoughts. Through answering questions on the poem’s literary elements, thorough …show more content…

In stanza two, the near rhyme is “And now We roam in Sovereign Woods—/And now We hunt the Doe—”, where the reader is able to detect the long ‘o’ in the two end words. In stanza three, the rhyme is in lines two and four: “…Upon the Valley glow—/It is as a Vesuvian face/Had let it’s pleasure through—”. The ‘oh’ sound in “glow” is mirrored with the longer ‘ooh’ in “through.” In stanza four, the near rhyme can be heard in lines one and three: “And when at Night—Our good Day done—/I guard My Master’s Head—/’Tis better than the Eider-Duck’s/Deep Pillow—to have shared—”. This near rhyme is more complex than previously mentioned rhymes, because the reader hears the rhyme of two sounds: “Day” in line one and “Eider” in line three are similar because of the ‘d’ and then a sharper-sounding vowel—an ‘a’ and an ‘e.’ Then, the words following, “done” and “duck,” respectively, also sound near to each other again because of the ‘d,’ but this time the duller, lower sounding vowel comes from the ‘o’ and ‘u.’ When “Day done” and “Eider-Duck” are read out loud, the reader can hear the double, almost alliteral sounds made from the repetitive ‘d’ and corresponding vowels. I found stanza five’s near rhyme to have some debate: “To foe of His—I’m deadly foe—/None stir the second time—/On whom I lay a Yellow Eye—/Or an emphatic Thumb—”. Initially, I thought the near rhyme could be heard with “time” and “thumb,”

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