Emily Dickinson’s Themes, Language, and Technique Essay

Emily Dickinson was one of the best American poets, but she is very famous for being a secluded writer. Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1846 in Amherst, Massachusetts and she died on May 15, 1886 at the age of 55 in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her isolation from the outside world still confuses literary critics and readers of her poetry and letters. There are many theories developed over time about her seclusion. Some people believe her secluded way of life was her own choice but she was very close to her family. Emily Dickinson lived in a happy home and went to a school during her life. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830 and lived there all her life most of her life. An introduction into Emily Dickinson’s poetry themes, and discussion about the isolation in her life, and discussion about the isolation in her poetry will be examined in the paper.

She, growing up in a religious family, determined that religion was not the pathway for her and she would instead be the only influence on her life (Emily, no pag.). To the rest of New England, God was loving, caring, and a Father; however, her poetry reveals that to her, He was a mystical figure in the sky who oscillated back and forth from loving to harsh. Dickinson’s poetry often mocks the Bible, God, prayer, and church attendance. Her poetry’s is commonly irreverent, calling the Bible “an antique Volume – Written by faded Men At the suggestion of Holy Spectres - ” (F1577). Dickinson repeatedly mocks God calling Him “Burglar! Banker!” and sarcastically “Father!” (F39). In a short, three-lined poem, Dickinson jeers at the traditional, Christian phrase “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost—Amen.” Dickinson instead worships nature “In the name of the Bee – And of the Butterfly – And of the Breeze – Amen!” (F23). Although subtle, it reveals that she knows enough about religious ways to parody it in a satirical fashion. Dickinson again belittles the effectiveness and importance of prayer. “Of Course – I prayed – And did God Care? He cared as much as on the Air A Bird – had stamped her foot – And cried ‘Give Me’ - ” (F581). To “remain true to herself,” Dickinson belittled the importance of faithful church attendance ( Emily, no pag.). “Some keep the Sabbath going to

Emily Dickinson was one of the best American poets, but she is very famous for being a secluded writer. Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1846 in Amherst, Massachusetts and she died on May 15, 1886 at the age of 55 in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her isolation from the outside world still confuses literary critics and readers of her poetry and letters. There are many theories developed over time about her seclusion. Some people believe her secluded way of life was her own choice but she was very close to her family. Emily Dickinson lived in a happy home and went to a school during her life. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830 and lived there all her life most of her life. An introduction into Emily Dickinson’s poetry themes, and discussion about the isolation in her life, and discussion about the isolation in her poetry will be examined in the paper.

The change begins in the next poem, “He touched me, so I live to know”. This “He”, presumably God, has the effect of calming Dickinson’s myriad small fears. She tells us, “I groped opon his breast--/It was a boundless place to me/And silenced, as the awful Sea/Puts minor streams to rest,” (2-5). At first it may seem that the “silenced” applies to Dickinson here—that this masculine God has taken away even more of her confidence in her own voice (4). When considered with the rest of the

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.

Within the poem, Dickinson writes, "The simple news that Nature told, With tender majesty." Dickinson is using personification because nature cannot literally speak to her and tell her the basic truths about life. In this poem, Dickinson communicates with the world, though the message from Nature. She views nature as her friend, which stresses to the reader that nature is personified. Dickinson uses slant rhyme within the poem, she also uses

This is symbolic of her looking at death as a new beginning as opposed to a sad ending. There is a feeling of disappointment as she thinks that she is going towards eternity but she just ends up viewing the “House that Seemed a Swelling of the Ground” and then centuries later, reflects upon her journey towards and eternity she didn’t witness. To Dickinson death was not something to be afraid of but to rather embrace and accept because it was inevitable, yet as in her life ends up disappointed because death leads to nothingness.

            Emily Dickinson was known for her odd poetic style. She had an odd sense of humor and a witty personality(Franke). With her writing taking place in the nineteenth century, she is now considered one of the first writers of the modernist movement. Dickinson was

     Emily Dickinson is one of the most famous authors in American History, and a good amount of that can be attributed to her uniqueness in writing. In Emily Dickinson's poem 'Because I could not stop for Death,' she characterizes her overarching theme of Death differently than it is usually described through the poetic devices of irony, imagery, symbolism, and word choice.

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)”.

Emily Dickinson’s reclusive life was arguably a result of her proposed bi-polar disorder. This life and disorder unduly influenced the themes of her poetry. She chose not to associate herself with society and volumes of her poems, published posthumously, examine this idea as well as the themes of nature and death. The clearest examples of these themes are presented in the following analysis of just of few of her

We are immediately made aware at the beginning of the poem that there is nothing out of place about this day except that they lost a family member. Dickinson was letting it be known that while the rest of the world continued as usual, they sat there in a room watching one of their suffering family members take her last breath. Death makes life different somehow. As Dickinson states, “-this to Us Made Nature Different” (lines 3,4), she tells us that when her family member died it changed them. This poem shows the raw emotion of sadness and the effect of grief overtaken her in just 6 short stanzas.

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.

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