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Analysis Of I Died For Beauty

Decent Essays

The poem that I have chosen to analyse is I Died for Beauty—but was Scarce by Emily Dickinson. This poem is one of Emily Dickinson’s most well-known poems and it only includes 12 lines and 3 stanzas. It is an allegorical and metaphorical piece of work that portrays the speaker who died for ‘Beauty’ while the man beside gave up his life for ‘Truth’. This simple and straightforward poem, written in first person, mainly explores the theme death but then also shows beauty and truth through Dickinson’s choice of words. Although this poem is daunting and frightening, it is also definitely fascinating and truthful.
The first stanza is about the speaker dying for ‘Beauty’. It seems that he (we can conclude that the speaker is a ‘he’ from the poem’s later mention of ‘Brethren’ and ‘Kinsmen’) must have been loved before and had a proper burial. But just before he gets comfortable or can get ‘Adjusted into the Tomb’ and left alone for too long, he is accompanied by a deceased man who died for ‘Truth’ in a tomb next to him. The theme death is brought in by the words ‘Tomb’ and ‘died’. Dickinson also used the word ‘scarce’ to show the reader that it is uncommon to find someone who believes that it is worth dying for beauty too. In the first stanza, the rhyme scheme ‘ABCB” is present but this rhyme scheme is only found in stanza one. Emily Dickinson capitalised some of the nouns used in her poem. I believe she did this to show that these words carry deep meaningfulness to this poem. She

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