Emily Dickinson's Courtney Jurson: Keep Hoping

The late psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross said: “The most beautiful people I’ve known are those who have known trials, have known struggles, have known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.” This inspirational quote suggests that adversity provides people with new opportunities and can drive people to improve their life. Adversity comes in numerous forms, such as emotional, physical, and financial. Individuals have a choice to learn from adversity or allow it to break their character. However, certain types of adversity, such as severe chronic conditions or diseases, do little to improve character and the human condition. Thus, all types of adversity, pain, and suffering are not beneficial, however, most work to improve an

“Success is counted sweetest, by those who ne’er succeed.” -Emily Dickinson. When Dickinson speaks of the pain of failure and the satisfaction of victory, she speaks from experience. The hermit-like poet wrote nearly 2,000 poems by the time she died at 55. Emily Dickinson was a reserved poet and her work was largely unpopular during her life. She wrote under the topics of mortality and romance, however her works are always questioned of originality and for their vague nature.

“Emily Dickinson.” Poets.org: From the Academy of American Poets. Copyright 1997-2012. Retrieved November 21, 2012. http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/155

*Reprinted by permission of the publisher and the Trustees of Amherst College from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, ed. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, copyright 1951,

Emily Dickinson lost her father on June 16, 1874 (Sewall 69). The sudden loss of her father stunned her and she wrote in a letter that she was “wondering where he is. Without any body, I keep thinking. What kind can that be” (Letter, 471). When Dickinson’s mother passed away in November of 1882, Dickinson also wrote in a letter about her “wonder at her fate” and she was “seeking what it means” (Letter, 815). The “wonder” in both letters shows that Emily Dickinson is a person who looks inward for the mystery of death. Many of her poems convey her preoccupation with death, concern with immortality and doubts about fulfillment beyond the grave. I will analyze “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died” (591) and “Because I could not stop for Death” (479), both of which deal with the death and eternity. These two poems reflect the conflicting attitudes of Emily Dickinson towards afterlife.

In Emily Dickinson’s poem, hope is introduced as an abstract idea in the free spirit of a bird. The bird crafts a continuous tune even when there are no words to sing. Then, an intense storm arises and creates opposition for the bird; however, even in the worst of times, it still sings beautifully. This scene conjures up images of a bird’s song, whistling above the sound of gale force winds and offering the promise that soon the storm will end. And though the speaker has felt the warmth of hope in the coldest of times and in the strangest of circumstances, the bird never asked for anything in return, serving the speaker selflessly. Hope, of course, is not an animate thing; it is inanimate, but the metaphor of the bird singing through the storm creates an image of hope is created in the readers’ minds. The inherent power of hope is reminded – it is always there, requires no maintenance, and is strong enough to see one through their troubles.

This poem is very positive and uplifting which is why a lot of people love this poem. " 'Hope Is the Thing With Feathers' In this poem, Dickinson is creating a metaphor of hope through a bird. The hope that is within the speaker is much like a bird that continues to fly inside her " (study.com). When people read this they see the hope that Emily has inside of her and it will give them hope as well. During this time period the country had just gotten out of the Civil War so the people may have been feeling down about their country and how things will go. With this poem people can read it and know that they should have hope that flutters inside of

In the sophisticated world of plants, as well as the wildflowers, trees, and shrubs that made up Emily Dickinson's Amherst, provided the poet with a constant source of inspiration and companionship. Emily Dickinson gardened throughout her life. At age eleven, she announced to a friend, "My Plants grow beautifully" (L3). In her middle years, she was able to tend plants year-round in the glasshouse her father added to the Homestead. Dickinson once said, "My flowers are near and foreign, and I have but to cross the floor to stand in the Spice Isles” (L315). A letter written just a few years before her death reminds us that Dickinson had to work to make such magic happen, "I am very busy picking up stems and stamens as the hollyhocks leave their clothes around"

Confronting death isn’t easy for anyone. In Emily Dickinson's “The Last Night that She Lived”, it is clear that life needs to be cherished. The speaker in this poem reaches a heightened mental state where her attitude toward the woman’s death is quite apparent. It is clearly shown through the language that the speaker uses that this woman’s death is a sad truth, one that makes the speaker grateful for life.

Emily Dickinson had hope and expressed that through her poem “Hope is the Thing with Feathers.” Even in the dark time of the Civil War (1861), she believed things would improve. Emily creates a metaphor of hope through the bird in the first line and continues on into the second line by implying that hope “perches in the soul” and that everyone has hope inside of them. Towards the end of the poem, she talks about how hope can be found anywhere even “in the chillest land and on the strangest sea” you just have to look for it because it will always be there. Emily speaks about her hope and how it “flies” around inside her, to encourage her audience to also have the same hope. “Hope is the Thing with Feathers” is an example of a ballad poem.

According to Kelly Clarkson’s lyrics of the song, “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger,”this represents that life’s trials and tribulations makes others stronger which builds character. The lyrics to this song helped me get through being bullied. Bullying can be a hard situation to go through but I learned a lot from this experience. My first experience in being bullied happened in the hallways of Grayson Elementary. I was in the corner reading Emily Dickinson's latest poetry as I was closing my book and getting ready for class there was a bunch of popular girls that began teasing me saying that I was weird for sitting by myself in a corner. I always had trouble relating to others especially my peers so I often would be by myself because

In this poem Emily Dickinson states how she’s an inspiration. She express how people should cheer her on and praise her.

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’s poem accomplished what she set out to accomplish. For decades her work has been read and studied. The works of Emily Dickinson have been admired because her ability to capture her readers with her uses of symbols, imagery, similes, and the themes of her work. For those reasons this poem is an excellent poem to

Ms. Dickinson may have had a clairvoyance and comfort about death. She definitely has an inventiveness for such a morbid topic, which everyone will universally experience in their own unique way. According to Biography.com, Emily and her sister Lavinia cared for their ill mother until she passed away. Emily also died rather young at the age of 55 from kidney disease. She could possibly be talking about herself in this poem (Biography.com, 2017).