Suffering in the Worst Way Suffering is a heart wrenching experience that causes great grief to an individual. Suffering can be found in many scenarios. A lost love or an unbearable pain caused by death. Suffering is much more intense than just plain and simple pain. Nobody wants to go through suffering it is a pain like no other. Emily Dickinson, a wonderful poet, wrote many poems about love and death. One poem she wrote about love is “If You Were Coming in the Fall”. This poem is all about waiting for the person you love to show up but they never do. She also wrote a poem about death titled “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain” which is about slowly becoming ill in the brain. Both of her poems are about very different topics but they have the same theme of suffering. The speakers in both poems are going through some sort of suffering either because of someone else or by things they can not control. In “ If You Were Coming in the Fall” and “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain” written by Emily Dickinson, the author uses similes, repetition, and imagery to help convey the theme of suffering. Emily Dickinson uses similes in the story “If You Were Coming in the Fall” to help relay the theme of suffering. The speaker of the story explains to the reader how they would do all of these things to know when they will see the person they love. Dickinson uses a simile in the third stanza, “If certain, when this life was out…...I’d toss it yonder, like a rind,”(Dickinson 13-15) the speaker is
Figurative language plays a key role in the poem, as well. The best example is The Morning after Death, which sounds a lot like mourning after death. In fact, mourning could even replace morning and the poem would still make sense. Another example occurs in the second stanza, when Dickinson uses the words sweeping and putting. By using such cold, unfeeling words when describing matters of the heart, the author creates a numb, distant tone. She really means that after someone dies, one almost has to detach oneself from the feelings of love that once existed for the deceased.
Emily Dickinson’s poem, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes-“is a profound portrayal of the debilitating process of grief human beings undergo when confronted with a horrific tragedy. The response to that ultimate pain is the predominance of numbness, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes-/The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs-“(1-2). This is a poem that must be read slowly to become saturated in the melancholy, the dehumanization of suffering as it affects each aspect of the body without reference to the chaotic emotionality of it. The abundance of metaphors within Dickinson’s poem provides the means to empathize the necessity of numbness. It is also through the use of punctuation and capitalization, depicting the presence of a
One of the prevalent themes of Emily’s work is death. Since she wrote about her inner world and troubles, death as a theme could not be avoided. Emily Dickinson had to face the losing friends to death. Several deaths of family members, including her mother, father and a nephew helped contribute to the theme in her poetry. These events affected her health but she found a way to cope with the idea of death with her poetry. She developed an attitude towards death, seeing it as a transition from mortality to immortality. She accepted its inevitability and tried to make peace with the idea itself. This kind of comprehension was something Emily needed in order to cope with the loss of her loved ones who had been her only support and company in her isolated lifestyle. The theme of death is shown in the poem I picked for the research paper. In the poem called “How Far Is It To Heaven”, by Emily Dickinson it again deals with death but heaven and hell is included. This poem has only a few lines but it gets straight to the point and the theme of the poem hits you right in the face. One example is clear from the first two lines where it asks “How Far Is It To Heaven?” (Line 1) and “As far as Death this way” (Line 2). The poem is so simple but portrays a powerful message to the reader. Another huge theme of
Two literary pieces, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by, Dylan Thomas and “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by, Emily Dickinson are both poems that discuss the topic of death. While there are some similarities and comparisons between the two poems, when it comes to the themes, both poets writing styles are quite different from one another which makes each poem unique. Thomas and Dickinson both use identical figurative language devices and other literature symbolisms as they explain their main themes which contrasts the differences to the concept of death. These distinct variations between poems are apparent in both the form, and how the choice of words is used in the poems. Both of the authors have presented two very different ideas on death. The poems are well distinguished literature devices, they share minor similarities and differences between each other and how they present the meaning of death to a toll.
Dickinson’s tone seems to portray suffering throughout the beginning of her poems, but gradually develops into a more hopeful and optimistic attitude
“If You Were Coming in the Fall” is a fascinating poem written by Emily Dickinson around the 1860’s. Many images and messages are skillfully woven in this classic piece of literature. Throughout the poem, Emily Dickinson employs an abundance of figurative language to create an image of a woman desperately waiting for her lover’s return. To better understand the poem, it would behoove one to first understand the author. Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts and had an introverted personality. She rarely left the vicinity of her home and very few people visited her. However, despite not having many guests, every person that visited her impacted her life. Some of her visitors were men and, needless to say, she
One of the prevalent themes of Emily’s work is death. Since she wrote about her inner world and troubles, death as a theme could not be avoided. Emily Dickinson had to face the losing friends to death. Several deaths of family members, including her mother, father and a nephew helped contribute to the theme in her poetry. These events affected her health but she found a way to cope with the idea of death with her poetry. She developed an attitude towards death, seeing it as a transition from mortality to immortality. She accepted its inevitability and tried to make
Emily Dickinson , a private American poet , whose poems made a lot of metaphorical references had her poems exposed by her younger sister right after she died. As a child Dickinson lived most of her life in isolation which gave her time to write a lot of things like letters and poems like “Before I Got My Eye Put Out” and “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark”. Most of her poems aren't literal. They are written in metaphorical ways to make you think. Like her poem “Before I Got My Eye Put Out” , I think this poem is referring to how she wanted to explore the world , but later realized that she would be safer inside where there was shelter and protection. In her poem “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” I think she refers to how she lost somebody that she was close to , and the problem she encountered along the way as they were gone. Both of these poems are alike in a way that they both talk about losing or giving up on something. In “Before I Got My Eye Put Put Out” the speaker reacts to the loss by giving up and not trying anymore. I think speaker in “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” would react differently and actually try to explore the world and go on an adventure.
Have you lost someone close to you in your life? It is difficult to deal with and my group and I read the poem “If You Were Coming in the Fall” be Emily Dickinson. The poem talks about a person talking about waiting for someone. During Dickinson’s life she lost many loved ones like family, close friends and her professor. This fact is relevant to the poem because the poem could be talking about meeting her loved ones again in the not so near future. After reading the poem I believe that the theme to “If You Were Coming in the Fall” by Emily Dickinson, is that when a person loses someone, the waiting will make them desperate to see that person again.
You Were Coming in the fall”. The poem is written by a woman named Emily Dickinson who studied in Amherst and Mount Holyoke female seminary, and made 1,800 poems in her life. THe poem is about someone who constantly waits for some else.Throughout her life, Emily Dickinson had lost many friends, family members and professors along the way due to illnesses such as cancer. I believe that the theme is people wait anxiously for an eternity for someone who may never return. The reason I believe that is the theme is because of how many important people that influenced her have passed away, and that she is constantly waiting for someone to help her in her time of
“If You Were Coming in the Fall”, is a poem written by Emily Dickinson. Emily Dickinson wrote a a lot about love. Dickinson fell in love with an unknown person when she was in her early twenties. Unfortunately, Edward Dickinson did not approve of Emily's unknown lover. Later on in Dickinson's life, she began to fall in love with a man named Otis Lord. Dickinson and Lord wrote each other constantly. Dickinson refused Lord's marriage proposal, but they continued to write to each other. Emily Dickinson's, “If You Were Coming in the Fall”, portrays a theme of love and time, a tone of distress, and a certain purpose.
The subject of death, including her own was a very prevalent theme in Emily Dickinson’s poems and letters. Some may find her preoccupation with death morbid, but this was not unusual for her time period. The mindset during Ms. Dickinson’s time was that of being prepared to die, in the 19th century people died of illness and accidents at an alarming rate, not to mention the Civil War had a high number of casualties, she also lived 15 years of her youth next to a cemetery. Dickinson’s view on death was never one of something to be feared she almost romanized death, in her poem “Because I Could not Stop for Death”, she actually personifies death while narrating from beyond the grave. In the first stanza she states “I could not stop for
In the poem "I Felt a Funeral in My Brain" Emily Dickinson exposes a person's intense anguish and suffering as they sink into a state of extreme madness. The poem is a carefully constructed analysis of the speaker's own mental experience. Dickinson uses the image of a funeral-service to symbolize the death of the speaker's sanity. The poem is terrifying for the reader as it depicts a realization of the collapse of one's mental stability, which is horrifying for most. The reader experiences the horror of the speaker's descending madness as the speaker's mind disintegrates and loses its grasp on reality. "I Felt a Funeral in My Brain,"
Two of Emily Dickinson’s poems, “I heard a Fly buzz-when I died” and “Because I could not stop for Death” are both written about life’s stopping point, death. Although the poems are written by the same poet, both poems view death in a different manner. Between the two poems, one views death as having an everlasting life while the other anticipates everlasting life, only to realize it does not exist. While both poems are about death, both poems also illustrate that the outcome of death is a mysterious experience that can only be speculated upon with the anticipation of everlasting life.
Emily Dickinson once said, “Dying is a wild night and a new road.” Some people welcome death with open arms while others cower in fear when confronted in the arms of death. Through the use of ambiguity, metaphors, personification and paradoxes Emily Dickinson still gives readers a sense of vagueness on how she feels about dying. Emily Dickinson inventively expresses the nature of death in the poems, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (280)”, “I Heard a fly Buzz—When I Died—(465)“ and “Because I could not stop for Death—(712)”.