Symbolical Concepts In Emily Dickinson's Ethan Frome

Emily Dickinson was an exceptional writer through the mid-late 1800’s. She never published any of her writings and it wasn’t until after her death that they were even discovered. The complexity of understanding her poems is made prevalent because of the fact that she, the author, cannot expound on what her writing meant. This causes others to have to speculate and decide for themselves the meaning of any of her poems. There are several ways that people can interpret Emily Dickinson’s poems; readers often give their opinion on which of her poems present human understanding as something boundless and unlimited or something small and limited, and people always speculate Dickinson’s view of the individual self.

Emily Dickinson is one of the most influential figures in American literature. Her unusual character and style has made her become one of America’s best and most original poets of all time. She composed almost 1800 poems, but fewer than a dozen were published in her lifetime. In her poems, she expresses her feelings about identity, religion, nature, love, and death. Her poems tell us a lot about her lifestyle, which was very private and reserved from society. In poems 260 and 409 it talks about the theme of identity. Although they consist of the same theme, there are differences in meaning, tone, and narration.

Emily Dickinson lived a large period of her life isolated from the outside world, surrounded by her close family and friends. It is apparent that with most of her spare time, she wrote poems and letters. Dickinson’s poems were heavily influenced by the gothic movement in the 19th century of America, and her fascination with nature that is exposed through her continuous theme of nature being the source of joy or pain in your life. Both Dickinson’s curiosity about nature, and the gothic movement, influenced the recurring theme in her poems, which is displayed in the analysis of “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”.

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. Dickinson and Thomas have presented two different ideas on the topic and concept of 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.

Poetry has many factors that go into it that help convey the theme and deeper meaning. Some poets like to use capitalization to emphasize what is important, some like to use figurative language, and some like to use characterization. Poetry is a boundless writing tool for self-expression which is why it is important to understand and identify how poets express the theme. One of the most famous poets is Emily Dickinson, she was extremely recluse, intelligent, and wrote some of the best poems known to man. To be able to analyze poetry and connect the bigger meaning behind the words written is to go into some of the greatest minds. When Emily Dickinson died people tried to alter her poems which took the deeper meaning away from them. One of the ways she likes to convey meaning is by using figurative language. Two poems by Dickinson is “I Felt a Funeral in my Brain” and “If You were Coming in the Fall”. “I Felt a Funeral in my Brain” is about depression and what it is like to have a mental breakdown while “If You were Coming in the Fall” is about the yearning of wanting a loved one to return. Although the theme of these two poems are not similar, the way the theme is being expressed is. In comparison of Emily Dickinson’s “I Felt a Funeral in my Brain” and “If You were Coming in the Fall,” she uses simile, imagery, and allusion to get the theme of each poem known.

*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,

One of the most important themes in the book ‘Ethan Frome’ is one way or another you reap what you sow. Many tragedies occur in the life of Ethan Frome time to time and although some are inevitable , other just simply occur because of his actions and mistakes. From the initiation , Ethan was surrounded by illness and in the end of the book he was forced to watch for his wife and wife’s disabled cousin. Nonetheless , Ethan Frome suffered all around for his actions.

Many authors are afraid to express their personal feelings on such a topic as death. Being a touchy subject, the fear of losing an audience comes into question. Such a theme isn’t an issue for Emily Dickinson however, writing meaningful poems and does it in an extraordinary way with describing the sensitive matter of death while still being able to control the reader’s emotions such as that in "Because I could not stop for death" and” I heard a fly buzz- when I died". Sharing the common rhythm about death, but differ in tone and mood towards the subject. Her use of metaphors and setting descriptions are expressively throughout these poems, giving the audience a more emotional toile from each of these.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers Hope is the thing with feathers” is a poem by Emily Dickinson in which she exhibits and proves hope is always in the soul and is eternal. Dickinson tries to express her hope, her desire to have faith in something and getting it achieved; no matter how violent the winds may be. The theme of Dickinson’s poems is communicated through the use of metaphors, personification and tone.

There are over three million cases of depression every year, and odds are you may know someone. Depression is a very common mental condition nowadays in the 21st century and most people can’t even recognize someone who is depressed. Famous American poet Emily Dickinson is probably America’s favorite poet, or one of the four favorites after Frost, Hughes, and Plath. Dickinson, in her poems, doesn’t always seem like the theme is depression/death/dying, as much as Plath, but there are a few of her poems where she does represent death or depression. We know that most of her life was pretty decent, or normal. However, there was a point in her life at around the age of 14 where she lost one of her closest friends Sofia, which people believe was a point where she started writing poems about death. People believe that a few of her famous poems about death happened around her near

All three poems had their unique features, but I preferred “Hope #314.”. One of the reasons why Emily Dickinson’s poem grasped my attention was because of the figurative language she used. “ And sweetest in the Gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm,” is my favorite stanza. This stanza represents how all of us can still have hope regardless of our own storms. Our own storms may get terrible at one point of life, but we’ll always be able to count with hope since it’s infinite. The bird is a symbol of hope which was the main idea of the poem. “ A Dream Deferred,” by Langston Hughes, provided several rhetorical questions, “ Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-- like

“Miss Dickinson was a recluse; but her poetry is rich with a profound and varied experience. Where did she get it? The moral image that we have of Miss Dickinson stands out in every poem; it is that of a dominating spinster whose very sweetness

Poem 336 was one of the hundreds of poems written by Emily Dickinson that were not published until after her death. The poem reflects the two main identities of Dickinson’s persona on the literal level Dickinson evinces her love for nature and romantic style however on a metaphorical level she conveys her desire to free herself of her traditional life style. The majority of Dickinson’s poetry was written in the romantic fashion her fascination with nature is exemplified greatly in this poem. Dickinson purposefully treats every element of nature as it were a proper noun.

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.