Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson Compare and Contrast Essay

Throughout the ages, American authors have changed the way people of their era and future eras think about society and their own livelihoods. Both Dickinson and Thoreau have questioned society and even changed what society deemed the norm through their writings. Two of these writers, Emily Dickinson and David Thoreau, isolated themselves from society so they could express themselves more freely. Their thoughts of society differ throughout their writing, their reclusiveness to society and seriousness to their writing. One can find some similarities in both writer’s works. These similarities show that one should be steadfast in their beliefs even if they oppose society. We should learn to live without constraint

Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson were both poets who wrote about the concept of death. The two poets illustrated different perspectives on death. Whitman identified with the entirety and truth of death; whereas, Dickinson pinpoints the dramatization of death. Walt Whitman’s message on death portrayed in his poetry is more compelling than that of Emily Dickinson’s. Whitman discusses the favorableness of death, the verisimilitude that pertains to death, and his elaborate explanations on how we humans understand death.

Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson’s poetry is very different; however death seems to be a familiar topic amongst both poets. Opposites attract, and you could say the same for Whitman and Dickinson because though they have different writing styles both repeatedly write about death. Once more, although both Whitman and Dickinson have many different feelings about death, they also share many similar feelings about it as well. Although Walt Whitman's poetry is rather long and quite simple and Emily Dickinson's are often short and complex, the theme of death strongly ties their works together.

Emily Dickinson, recognized as one of the greatest American poets of the nineteenth century, was born December 10, 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts (Benfey, 1). Dickinson’s greatness and accomplishments were not always recognized. In her time, women were not recognized as serious writers and her talents were often ignored. Only seven of her 1800 poems were ever published. Dickinson’s life was relatively simple, but behind the scenes she worked as a creative and talented poet. Her work was influenced by poets of the seventeenth century in England, and by her puritan upbringing. Dickinson was an obsessively private writer. Dickinson withdrew herself from the social contract around the age of thirty and devoted herself, in secret, to writing.

During the 1800, when death was very prevalent and the most talked about topic on the planet, considering all the literal hundreds of plagues and harsh famines that threatened the population on each continent, a writer emerged with a vivid idea and perception of the insane world that she lived in and the loss that she faced in her life. That writer was none other than Emily Dickinson, the lovely Belle of Amherst who was essentially a recluse who wrote of the sorrows that precede after subjection to social ostracism and the pain that it evokes. She strategically manipulated her words and diction to evoke a strong passion about her craft and her life overall during her time. She wrote of things like the great tragedies

Dickinson had a series of passionate, intense emotional (and perhaps romantic) connections with men and women that helped her to form ideas about love and loss. Despite this, she lived alone, becoming even more reclusive when her parents died. However, her isolation from the outside world also gave her much time to form her own conclusions about humanity, and create poems that resonated with people of all backgrounds and time periods. Emily Dickinson lived during the Romantic-Transcendentalist period of American literature and explored intertwining themes of love, death, nature and immortality; however, her poems “Because I Could Not Stop For Death”, “I

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson is one of the best poets in America. She is known for her uncommon way of writing poetry. There was a great deal of problems going on in her life. She spent mostly her entire life living in her home and only left unless she needed to do so. Unlike other poets, she did not have any order to her writings. She just wrote what she was feeling. Her work was anonymously published and later became known after her death.

Emily clearly had a gift in poetry, but did not capitalize on it. Also, the common theme of Emily Dickinson’s poetry was not very inspirational. Instead, it tended to be darker and less optimistic. Emily typically expressed depressing ideas, instead of those which would inspire people. Frederick Douglass on the other hand, enlightened the world about the reality of slavery, bringing attention to this issue and propelling the movement for

They both had similar lives which influenced both of their writing choices. They both went into war and they both had some losses in their family. I think that Poe's life affected the way he wrote more than it affected

Walt Whitman’s poetry is normally very long and wordy. He has more of a conversational style rather than traditional. He also writes in free verse whereas Emily Dickinson poems can be described more as lyrical, her poems are also much shorter than Whitman’s. Dickinson doesn’t like to drag her poems out she likes to be quick and right to the point.

Edgar Allen Poe (Poe) and Ralph Waldo Emerson (Emerson) are both famed romantic writers and poets from early to mid-nineteenth century. Their works are still some of the most studied and referenced in the present day. Both authors are famed for their writing and ideas, but their fame gained success each in their unique way. The two men had starkly different writing styles, and their views on philosophy were just as different. Both differences are evident when reading the two authors works. Emerson has an approach that based its roots in nature. He observes people and nature coinciding as one and brings out the beauty not just of nature but of life that others may not observe as part of their everyday life. Emerson has a passion for using his writing to better peoples’ outlook and opinion on life through his philosophical ideas. Poes approach to romantic writing is self-centered, and the way he portrays romanticism is in some cases dark. Rather than help the reader and their feelings; Poe writes about his experiences and his feelings through different avenues of writing. Both authors have a common theme in their writing. They both show an importance of self-awareness.

While both Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman wrote amazing poetry about the nature of relationships between humans, their styles of writing about it could not differ more. Their subject matters vary greatly from one another. Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman may write about completely different situations and compose their pieces in contrasting ways, but their poetry still contains many similarities. Walt wrote about sensual parts of relationships. Most of the time, he was hopeless and defeated.

Her love for dashes a creates madness at end or midline. Critics say Emily Dickinsons works are not with her time espeacially for a woman in the 19th century. Edgar Allan Poe was a gothic poet with a unique style which makes his work even better to some. Poe’s poems are characterized by a musical effect of words to the reader’s emotion as in the poem The Raven. Poe’s poems are characterized by a gloomy and threading tone. His poems lean towards tradition while maintaining gothic aspects and evil happenings. Poe’s horror and lack of love themes are believed to have been his personal reflection per the lonely life that he lived. The theme of death is attributed to his sorrows after he lost his parents at a very tender age of three. Poe and Dickinson’s pomes were characterized by traditional writing styles and they all reflected upon the poet’s lonely lives. Both poets exhibited good poetic writing styles with a theme of death and lack of love. The pomes’ excellent writing style resulted in emotional poems. On the contrary, Poe was an excellent gothic poet whose poems are characterized by death, horror and uncertainty. Dickson’s poems are characterized by themes such as death, nature, religion, eternity or love although

Rich, a writer extremely interested in Emily Dickinson’s life and poetry, was also deeply influenced by her. Rich composed poems, essays, and criticism about Dickinson, borrowed lines from her poetry, and even drew parallels between her own life and Dickinson’s. Similarities between the two poets also extended to style within their writing, as well as modernist themes that both advocate, especially feminism.

Emily Dickinson is one of the most interesting female poets of the nineteenth century. Every author has unique characteristics about him/her that make one poet different from another, but what cause Emily Dickinson to be so unique are not only the words she writes, but how she writes them. Her style of writing is in a category of its own. To understand how and why she writes the way she does, her background has to be brought into perspective. Every poet has inspiration, negative or positive, that contributes not only to the content of the writing itself, but the actual form of writing the author uses to express his/her personal talents. Emily Dickinson is no different. Her childhood and adult experiences and culture form