Theme Of The Poem Hope Is The Thing With Feathers

The intriguing thing about this poem is it’s use of the imagery of a bird, the first line is the audience being addressed as “little bird” something that could easily be a childhood nickname, “Fly away little bird / Fly away to a better place / Where you will soar through the sky / In the wide open space” This is a simple verse of the author imploring the ‘little bird’ to fly freely, nothing different until paired with the second verse “Fly away to live out all your hopes and dreams / Enter the real world / Of wondrous things / Through the dark clouds and over the rainbows” Using the mirroring words of ‘hopes and dreams’ and ‘dark clouds and over the rainbows’ creates the thoughts of highs and loves and everything in between, a common happening in the ‘real world’, which is usually used in regards of a child growing up and becoming up and creating a life for themselves. This is defined even more in the next three lines; “Fly away to destinations unknown / Fly away to discover yourself / And embrace what you find” these lines emphasise the thought of growing up and moving on in life, but the use of ‘embrace’ encourages the ‘little bird’ to not be afraid of change or transforming themselves, instead to welcome the difference and

The poet orders his listener to behold a “solitary Highland lass” reaping and singing by herself in a field. He says that anyone passing by should either stop here, or “gently pass” so as not to disturb her. As she “cuts and binds the grain” she “sings a melancholy strain,” and the valley overflows with the beautiful, sad sound. The speaker says that the sound is more welcome than any chant of the nightingale to weary travelers in the desert, and that the cuckoo-bird in spring never sang with a voice so thrilling. Impatient, the poet asks, “Will no one tell me what she sings?” He speculates that her song might be about “old, unhappy, far-off things, / And battles long ago,” or that it might be humbler, a simple song about “matter of today.” Whatever she sings about, he says, he listened “motionless and still,” and as he traveled up the

The title of the poem, “Sympathy”, represents the feeling that the speaker has toward a bird enclosed in a cage. The speaker relates to the bird by repeating the words “I know” and following them with an action of the bird, revealing that he has also

In the third stanza, the persona emphasizes the point that everything seems to be going wrong. He adds that the days are twice as long and the birds have forgotten their song. This only shows us that the persona probably experiences sleepless nights and awaits for morning with much eagerness - the birds seem to take longer to announce that morning has come by their singing (Johnson 1). To collaborate this with the idea that everything reminded the persona of the departed, it seems that the persona spends his days and nights thinking about the dear person or object.

Emily states that the storm that puts down the little birds singing is a sore storm. She could be using the word sore as painful. This means that the storm could be something painful and traumatizing in her own life and the little faint noise of the bird singing is the little hope she has left from all the pain and suffering she has gone through. In addition, this little bird she can hear or hope she believes in comes from God and He is the one helping her get through this sore storm. The two poems “Because I could not stop for death” and “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers” relate because Emily Dickinson is talking about clinging to God for guidance.

From reading and analysing all three of the poem “Hope” by Emily Dickinson, “A Dream Deferred” by Langston Hughes, and “Maggie and Milly and Molly and May” by E. E. Cummings I have come to understand poems more. Emily Dickinson’s work appealed to me by the way she used personification throughout the whole poem in order to describe hope and how she interprets the word hope while comparing it to a living organism. In the first few lines the writer says “Hope is the thing with feathers/ That perches in the soul”(1-2) referring to hope being a bird, I understood that she was referring hope to a powerful substance that is all around us and even in the most uncommon and unexpected places; but to me a bird isn't really that powerful so that's something I couldn't connect to.

The poem is about the vulnerability, innermost torment and the suppression of an emotional and fragile personality symbolized through the image of a Bluebird hidden inside the speakers mind.

It shows the flexibility we have with nature. “Hope is the thing with feathers”, she uses the birds to stand for hope. This is one of the poems that Dickinson writes that uses personification and does not offer grief. Dickinson’s poems offer a lot of insight into her work

The bird’s characteristics stated in this poem is intended to symbolize the hope of a better life. The other symbols are “Gale and Storm”. They symbolize the hardship we go through in life. This hardship repress hope but hope continues to fly and never ends. In the third stanza, Dickinson continues to use symbols as in “the chilliest land and the strangest Sea”.

Dickinson and Whitman also use similar poetic devices in "Hope is a Thing with Feathers” and “O Captain! My Captain!” Each poem contains an extended metaphor. In Dickinson’s poem, a bird clearly symbolizes hope. The first stanza introduces the bird metaphor: ‘Hope is the thing with feathers--/That perches in the soul.’ The next lines ‘And sings the tune without the words--/And never stops—at all—’ illustrate the interminable nature of the bird and hope. The second stanza expands the metaphor by saying ‘And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—.’ The bird’s song, or hope, is the sweetest during a Gale, or troubled times. The first lines in the final stanza ‘I’ve heard it in the chillest land--/ And on the strangest Sea’ describe the bird, or hope, as being

The thing about hope is, nobody knows where it comes from. The author really wants to make the reader think about hope and where it comes into play in your life, in the poem he uses to bird to get his message across. Also, the author uses imagery to help understand the story. He uses the storm, for instance, to show how bad things have to get before you really have to use hope in life. He uses this to show us how things can feel when you’ve had a bad day or you’re just down in the dumps.

In “Hope is the thing with feathers” the author characterizes hope as being caring and always being there when it's needed, which helps develop the theme of hope and perseverance. The following line, “And never stops at all”, helps characterize the bird in the poem as persevering. This piece of evidence shows that hope will always be there which characterization of caring. The line “That perches in soul”, gives the characterization of perseverance. This line is portraying the idea of hope always being with you, hence the line perching within you, or in your soul. The line “And sour must be the storm that could abash the little bird” characterizes hope as persevering. The line illustrates the bird as always being there even when times are tough. Even when one might think that there is no hope, hope will always be there. The quote “Yet never in extremity it asked a crumb-of me” characterize hope as being giving.The line shows how hope will never ask for anything in return and instead gives without expecting anything in return.

She uses a number of literary devices in the poem. One primary example of the figurative language that she uses is a the personifications do symbolism of hope. A symbol is an image that represents an abstraction. For example, a red rose may represent love, or a stone may represent hardheartedness. In “’Hope Is The Thing With Feathers,” the poet assigns hope the symbol of a ‘thing with feathers,’ more specifically a bird. Even though that, by the end of the poem, readers can definitely conclude that Dickinson used a metaphor by saying ‘hope is a bird,’ she does not make that clear until the very end. The metaphor began as only a “partial one: a ‘thing with feathers’ is not yet a bird, but some sort of object, not easily envisioned and defined only by the fact that it is feathered, that is, winged, capable of flight. It is a transient human experience, one that ‘perches’ in the soul but does not live there. It ‘sings the tune without the words,’ that is, a song in which rational, lexical meaning plays no role, while melody is all. Finally it ‘never stops at all’” (Leiter). The symbolism of saying that hope is a bird assists the reader in having a better understanding of how the virtue of human desire exists in side one’s soul, and is always singing – always alive – even when times get drastic. A bird is used to represent hope since “birds are often viewed as free and self-reliant, or as symbols of spirituality” (Rose and Ruby). The feathered fowl in this poem is “courageous and persevering, for it continues to share its song under even the most difficult conditions” (Rose and Ruby). Providing imagery of a bird also helps one to form connections as to what hope would act like if it were personified as said

Dickinson’s poem ‘I Could Bring You Jewels -- had I a mind to –‘ is similar to ‘Hope is the Thing with Feathers’ in regards to the tone of the poem. It is a joyful, optimistic poem. In ‘I Could Bring You Jewels’, Dickinson is corresponding with an unknown person in a coy, teasing tone. This poem is very different to most of Dickinson’s poetry because unlike many of her other poems she is not discussing death or loneliness and is instead, conversing with someone and seems to be enjoying herself. She is talking to this person about what gift she is going to buy him/her.

She introduces the metaphor in the first two lines of the poem by saying, ““Hope” is the thing with feathers - / That perches in the soul -” and then builds the poem around the idea of a bird. When Dickinson says, “And sings the tune without the words- / And never stops - at all -” she shows that the hope doesn’t have to be sensible, and it never stops existing in one’s heart. In the last stanza she says, “I’ve heard it in the chillest land - / And on the strangest Sea -”. It is not a possible thing to hear the hope, but in this line she tries to say that that hope is everywhere. Even though the main idea of the poem is hope being in everyone’s heart, the metaphor of hope being a bird is actually what makes the poem more interesting for the