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,”
When people think of Emily Dickinson, they think of a white dressed, ghostly woman hidden in the corridors of home, writing poem after poem. They do not think of the actual person Emily was. Emily Dickinson grew up in a rich, social, scholarly environment. She could have chosen many paths that would have led her to a completely different life, but because of circumstances, the social, high energy girl with a sense of humor became isolated by her own choice. Though Emily Dickinson’s depression is romanticized, sickness, social life, and death led her to seclusion and deep poems.
Emily Dickinson’s poetry arose during a time of much deep questioning going on in the literary world. Many of her poems lend themselves to various interpretations, as Dickinson looks at the world through a variety of perspectives. Dickinson wrote concisely and broke the traditional rules of writing poetry, and in doing so often wrote in one way but meant something entirely different. Poem 340, or “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” is one of these such poems that has no clear answer and is ultimately left ambiguous for the reader to interpret. This essay will highlight how this poem can be interpreted in the formal elements of rhythm, rhyme, assonance, and alliteration, and how these elements can affect the meaning of the poem.
The four year old sat sound asleep in the back seat of the car, not knowing anything that was going on around her.
Emily Dickinson was an exceptional writer through the mid-late 1800’s. She never published any of her writings and it wasn’t until after her death that they were even discovered. The complexity of understanding her poems is made prevalent because of the fact that she, the author, cannot expound on what her writing meant. This causes others to have to speculate and decide for themselves the meaning of any of her poems. There are several ways that people can interpret Emily Dickinson’s poems; readers often give their opinion on which of her poems present human understanding as something boundless and unlimited or something small and limited, and people always speculate Dickinson’s view of the individual self.
Dickinson’s use of figurative language in “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” contributes to the meaning of the poem. With the use of personification, symbolism, and examples of vivid imagery, she composes a poem which is both unique and captivating. The title and first line of the poem, “Because I Could
One of the most debated and polarizing issues in modern day America is the issues surrounding the second amendment. The issue of gun control has been raging on in the American political scene for years and, talk about the issue has only grown. The debate has always been brought to the limelight after major shootings throughout the United States, most recently with the horrible attack at the nightclub in Orlando, Florida. According to the crowd sourced website, Mass Shooting Tracker, there have over 370 mass shootings that have taken place this year itself. The tracker considers all acts of violence where four or more people are wounded or killed. The second amendment has been put into place over 200 years ago to give the people the right to bear arms. While people argue the exact interpretation of the second amendment, the ability to own a gun in America must be respected. There are many pros and cons to owning guns in America, but we can all agree that drastic steps must be taken to end the violence that guns have strangled America with.
It was almost 5 o’clock on a Friday. Mom and Eric had left to pick up his kids, Olivia and Conner. The usually about two hours to pick up the kids and come back since they live in Chicago. My sister, Hunter, was at work until 9:30, so I was home alone for a while. I went to let the my dogs outs. Jim’s dogs were in his backyard. There were two of them and I was frighten of them attacking someone, because they were huge and probably strong. Even though their was a fence serpating my yard and theirs, I still worried about them getting lose. As my dogs ran out into the grass, JIm’s dogs jumped up on the fence. They we so powerful that the fence bend, almost like it was about to snap. Their piercing barks filled the area with sound. I hurried the
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
We looked for an hour but I finally found it. It was purple with two squares at the
In the poem 764 of The Norton Anthology which starts "My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun -" (line 1), Emily Dickinson takes on the role of a married woman of the nineteenth century whose husband owns and completely controls her. The woman, whose voice Dickinson wrote from, reflects on the importance of her husband 's life to hers and her dependency on him being there to direct her life. Dickinson never married and lived a secluded life in her family 's home, only ever leaving the house for one year before returning again. Though she did not marry, the traditional roles of women still restricted her to live in the home of her family and under the ruler ship of her father like the rest of the women in the house. Some of her close friends and
If I wasn’t free, my life would be different because I wouldn’t get to keep a gun. I could not speak freely. I also could not get on the internet, Google, eBay, or face book.
Putting guns in the arms in the wrong hands. One hot sunny day went by it was a mother of four two girls and two boys. Later that night the oldest son went out with friends where he was not post to be loud yelling as in the whole world heard them. Move out their way there's a gun!.Blood we yelled I fell down to my knees and started to cry don't u play trying to play a prank on me get up it was nothing there. U can hear a soft cry like it was a whispering voice around but it was nobody there but us. So moquia took a look at marshawn and said help somebody help me he gone and not coming back somebody but again there was nothing to be heard.The next day moquia thought it was a dream. She went into Marshawn room to wake him up and to mess with
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,
Emily Dickinson a modern romantic writer, whose poems considered imaginative and natural, but also dark as she uses death as the main theme many times in her writings. She made the death look natural and painless since she wanted the reader to look for what after death and not be stuck in that single moment. In her poems imagination play a big role as it sets the ground for everything to unfold in a magical way. The speakers in Dickinson’s poetry, are sharp-sighted observers who see the inescapable limitations of their societies as well as their imagined and imaginable escapes. To make the abstract tangible, to define meaning without confining it, to inhabit a house that never became a prison, Dickinson created in her writing a distinctively elliptical language for expressing what was possible but not yet realized. She turned increasingly to this style that came to define her writing. The poems are rich in aphorism and dense
Emily Dickinson was one of the many famous American poets whose work was published in the 19th century. Her writing style was seen as unconventional due to her use of “dashes and syntactical fragments”(81), which was later edited out by her original publishers. These fragmented statements and dashes were added to give emphasis to certain lines and subjects to get her point across. Even though Emily Dickinson was thought to be a recluse, she wrote descriptive, moving poems on death, religion, and love. Her poems continue to create gripping discussions among scholars on the meaning behind her poems.