Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson

The life of Emily Dickinson seems to be one of simplicity. After all, she only lived in two houses her entire life. Even though her life might have seemed plain, her mind was fully understanding to a multitude of ideas and feelings. In her poetry you can see her dealing with many concepts and how she feels about certain things in her life. A couple themes I found particularly interesting were death and nature.

Death can be a complicated issue for many people. However, for Dickinson it seemed to consume her, and therefore is evident several times within her poetry. A clear example of this is in her poem 280 when she writes, "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,/ And Mourners to and fro/ Kept treading-treading-till it seemed/ That Sense was breaking through-" (Dickinson 176). The whole poem goes on referring to what I believe her to be talking about, is her own funeral. Reading only that poem alone would make Dickinson seem to be depressed, but I think it is more that she is scared senseless about her death. In the end of the poem she writes, "And the a Plank in Reason, broke,/ And I dropped down, and down-/ And hit a World, at every plunge,/ And finished knowing-then-" (Dickinson 176). Dickinson seems to be afraid of what will happen after death, and that when the end comes she expects it to be a horrible ending to what could have been a great life.

Contrary to this however Dickinson may want to embrace death since it seems inevitable. In a critical essay by Ralph Joly he writes, "On one hand, she seems nearly to celebrate it as an anodyne to life, as in "Because I could not stop for Death," where death appears in the guise of a suitor and the grave is a "House" in the ground" ("Emily Dickinson"). Dickinson seems to think about death a lot, and because of this it would seem ignorant for her not to look at it in other ways besides negative. Death is a thought provoking subject, and for Dickinson it was one that was far from being overlooked. While Dickinson might have overly agonized about the issue of death, it is still a subject that we should address within ourselves, and to familiarize ourselves with our feelings on death.

Nature is a subject that deserves glorification, and Dickinson made sure of this in many of her poems. One example of Dickinson praising nature is in poem 314, "Nature-sometimes sears a Sapling". I believe I this poem she makes mother nature out to be more important than human beings. At the end of this poem she writes, "We-who have the Souls-/ Die oftener-not so vitally-" (Dickinson 179). This is a very powerful line because it says that the permanent loss of human life isn't nearly as detrimental as the loss of nature. Even though we have souls, our souls are in no comparison to the natural phenomena of the regrowth of nature. I personally couldn't agree more with her in that even though nature can be harsh to itself, it is much more powerful and upstanding than human life.

The poem 986 is also a wonderful poem in reference to nature. When I first read this poem I wasn't sure as to what Dickinson was intentionally writing about. In a critical essay by Angela Estes she also refers to this poem as a point to reference with Dickinson and nature. In it she refers to the poem talking about a snake. After rereading this poem I found it to be clever and enlightening. One thing Estes writes about this poem is that,