The stanza I have chosen to write about is the first line of Emily Dickinson’s poem “Heaven”—Is What I Cannot Reach! It is the same thing as the title of the poem. The way the word "heaven" is isolated in the first line stresses that heaven is the subject of the poem. The quotation marks highlight the word even more, as if Dickinson was cherishing the word and considering all that it might mean. The first line can be difficult to interpret because it can have various different interpretations. A possible understanding of it could be religious. One could think that Dickinson believes she will never reach heaven because she has done things in her past that will stop her or she believes that she is not good enough to go there. Another possible …show more content…
It is somewhere far beyond the hills and houses in the horizon. The “interdicted land” alludes to the sense of inhibition which she feels. The house represents something that is always in sight. Everyone knows it’s there yet no one can scale the hill that leads up to it. Dickinson describes “heaven” as a beautiful place where she strongly wishes she was. It is a place where she can leave all problems behind. The clouds are another example of something that she adores that is impossibly out of her reach and unobtainable. These colors are reflecting off of the land that is hidden from the eye. One catches glimpses of “heaven”, little bits of what it contains, but it still remains out of reach. She does into depth about a place beyond the colorful sunlight filled clouds that is far from where she is. This can be interpreted as Dickinson saying that things for people typically get better with time. A person can currently be in a negative place but far into the future they may be in a beautiful, sunlight filled place. However, Dickinson continues to say that she believes she will never reach such a state by describing it as being an “interdicted land”. She knows that such a place exists but it is not for …show more content…
In the first line she states that the purple sky of the afternoons she encounters entice her memory. Purple can be described as being a taunting and enticing color. This reflects the idea that “heaven” to Dickinson is in sight but out of reach. Like most clouds, these colored ones appear and disappear in the sky. One’s memories do the same. The clouds remind her of things in her past that haunt and tease her. This can suggest that Dickinson has done things in her past that are not things she enjoys remembering or they are things that are not accepted by religion. Such things could be what she believes are holding her back from reaching, or achieving, “heaven”. However she also suggests that there are pleasant memories. These can be what lead her to say that she knows what “heaven” is like and where it may be. She remembers being in a divine, pleasant place in her past and misses feeling that way. A decoy can be described as a place that people or things believe in too easy, that only the gullible can fall for it. This is another possible way of saying that one wishing for “heaven” or a better place is foolish. It is a bitterly honest way of someone saying that things do not always get better for
It suggests that the poet is thinking about the possibility of death and thinking about life after death. I think that the poet has opted for the word "heavenward" as it states that the poet is looking at life after death. The metaphor "I will not feel, until I have to" begins the third stanza. This suggests that the poet is trying not to fe... ... middle of paper ... ...
Although, Emily Dickinson physically isolated herself from the world she managed to maintain friendships by communicating through correspondence. Ironically, Dickinson’s poetry was collected and published after her death. Dickinson explores life and death in most of her poems by questioning the existence of God. Dickinson applies common human experiences as images to illustrate the connection from the personal level of the human being, to a universal level of faith and God. This can be seen in Dickinson’s Poem (I, 45).
Emily Dickinson was an intricate and contradictory figure who moved from a reverent faith in God to a deep suspicion of him in her works. (Sherwood 3) Through her own intentional choice she was, in her lifetime, considered peculiar. Despite different people and groups trying to influence her, she resisted making a public confession of faith to Christ and the Church. (Sherwood 10) She wanted to establish her own wanted to establish her own individuality and, in doing so, turned to poetry. (Benfey 27) Dickinson’s poems were a sort of channel for her feelings and an “exploration” of her faith (Benfey 27).
Dickinson’s Christian education affected her profoundly, and her desire for a human intuitive faith motivates and enlivens her poetry. Yet what she has faith in tends to be left undefined because she assumes that it is unknowable. There are many unknown subjects in her poetry among them: Death and the afterlife, God, nature, artistic and poetic inspiration, one’s own mind, and other human beings.
She depicts her life as magnificent, she lays her legs and arms out and feels the bliss of being this age with no prerequisites set upon her. It is this feeling and memory that the speaker will be pulling from for whatever remains of her life. It would,"…always be there, behind those nights (33)."Even when she is more established, the age she is currently, and considerably assist, later on, she can draw satisfaction and peace from recollecting what her life used to resemble. She will recollect when she had boundless drains (at regular intervals). Her life was kept exclusively by "[a] clock of cream and flame (36-37)" or the warmth of their closeness. This is the thing that the speaker alludes to as "heaven."A heaven she will always remember and can simply rationally come back to. She has "known heaven" and will always have
“Death, the end of life: the time when someone or something dies” (Merriam-Webster, 2014). The definition of death is quite simple, the end of life is inescapable. I chose to write about death and impermanence because it is something we all must inevitably face. People often deal with death in a number of different ways. Although it is something that we must eventually face, it can be hard to come to terms with because the idea can be hard to grasp. Some of us fear it, others are able to accept it, either way we all must eventually face it. In this essay I will look at two different literary works about death and impermanence and compare and contrast the different elements of the point of view, theme, setting, and symbolism. The comparison of these particular works will offer a deeper look into words written by the authors and the feelings that they experiencing at that particular time.
This is evident because Dickinson seems to poke fun at the people who attend church with the line, “Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice- I just wear my Wings” (5). This line from the poem indicates that Dickinson’s way of worshiping is much simpler and maybe more effective in her opinion. At the end of the poem it mentions that Dickinson is going somewhere that might be a place other than heaven as she writes, “So instead of getting to Heaven, at last – I’m going, all along” (11). This last line of the poem indicates that Dickinson might realize that her not attending church will not get her in to heaven, although she seems to be calm and content with
Emily Dickinson became legendary for her preoccupation with death. All her poems contain stanzas focusing on loss or loneliness, but the most striking ones talk particularly about death, specifically her own death and her own afterlife. Her fascination with the morose gives her poems a rare quality, and gives us insight into a mind we know very little about. What we do know is that Dickinson’s father left her a small amount of money when she was young. This allowed her to spend her time writing and lamenting, instead of seeking out a husband or a profession. Eventually, she limited her outside activities to going to church. In her early twenties, she began prayed and worshipped on her own. This final step to total seclusion clearly fueled her obsession with death, and with investigating the idea of an afterlife. In “Because I could not stop for Death”, Dickinson rides in a carriage with the personification of Death, showing the constant presence of death in her life. Because it has become so familiar, death is no longer a frightening presence, but a comforting companion. Despite this, Dickinson is still not above fear, showing that nothing is static and even the most resolute person is truly sure of anything. This point is further proven in “I heard a Fly buzz”, where a fly disrupts the last moment of Dickinson’s life. The fly is a symbol of death, and of uncertainty, because though it represents something certain—her impending death—it flies around unsure with a “stumbling buzz”. This again illustrates the changing nature of life, and even death. “This World is not Conclusion” is Dickinson’s swan song on the subject of afterlife. She confirms all her previous statements, but in a more r...
Hence, Dickinson’s choice of the word “philosophy” in the second line of the second stanza to signify science .Basically, the main point of that stanza is to assert that science cannot help us know what is beyond the physical universe because it is only useful when the material universe is 4 concerned. Its subject matter is what lies inside the universe not what is beyond the veil of kenning. The third stanza can be seen as a condensation of a dark and depressing chapter in the history of Christianity. Before Christianity became legal in
Emily Dickinson is one of the great visionary poets of nineteenth century America. In her lifetime, she composed more poems than most modern Americans will even read in their lifetimes. Dickinson is still praised today, and she continues to be taught in schools, read for pleasure, and studied for research and criticism. Since she stayed inside her house for most of her life, and many of her poems were not discovered until after her death, Dickinson was uninvolved in the publication process of her poetry. This means that every Dickinson poem in print today is just a guess—an assumption of what the author wanted on the page. As a result, Dickinson maintains an aura of mystery as a writer. However, this mystery is often overshadowed by a more prevalent notion of Dickinson as an eccentric recluse or a madwoman. Of course, it is difficult to give one label to Dickinson and expect that label to summarize her entire life. Certainly she was a complex woman who could not accurately be described with one sentence or phrase. Her poems are unique and quite interestingly composed—just looking at them on the page is pleasurable—and it may very well prove useful to examine the author when reading her poems. Understanding Dickinson may lead to a better interpretation of the poems, a better appreciation of her life’s work. What is not useful, however, is reading her poems while looking back at the one sentence summary of Dickinson’s life.
The tone in the first stanza is of joyousness and excitement, as people make their way to heaven. Dickinson uses the words “gayer,” “hallelujah,” and “singing” to emphasize the uplifting feeling here. It could be argued that this is the point in the humans’ lives (or deaths, or afterlives, depending on how one looks at it) when they reach the pinnacle of happiness, for they have finally entered heaven. The humans, now dead, would then acquire wings, immortality, and an angelic status that rises far above that of humans. Much like Dickinson’s other poems, this one uses metaphors to represent similar things, such as “home,” which represents “heaven,” “snow,” which represents the “clouds” on which heaven resides, and “vassals,” which represents the “angels” who serve God.
“Because I could not stop for death,” is a poem written by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson. Dickinson’s style of writing is very different from other poets. She writes down what comes to mind and doesn’t focus her attention on the grammatical errors she has in her poem. She writes in prose, uses many hyphens, and has unconventional punctuations. This, however, is what makes Emily stand out from other poets. Throughout the poem, Dickinson uses free verse, and doesn’t have a pattern of rhyme or meter and most of the lines begin with an unstressed syllable. The last line of each stanza is always short and to the point. Dickinson uses alliteration, as well as, imagery in her poem. Dickinson portrays that although death is a natural stage in one’s life, it is not the end of one’s journey, but a new beginning.
the human race, in addition to doing it in the name of her own sanity.
The speaker is reflecting on her experience from life to death. In the first stanza, Dickinson (1863) writes “Because I could not stop for Death/He kindly stopped for me” (line 1). To me, this shows that the speaker was too busy to even think about the possibility of death. In life we are often bouncing from one subject to another, from one moment to the next that you are never really thinking about when death might come. Death is often in the shadows of our mind and is rarely a subject that is give any attention. Even the speaker was not thinking about the possibility of dying, it simply happened. You are reminded again that the speaker in the poem was not ready for death when Dickinson writes, “the Dews drew quivering and chill/ for only Gossamer, my Gown” (lines 14-15). Death came during the night to gather her up and she was not properly dressed for the
Pretty much as should be obvious paradise in light of the fact that his face clouds her view, her point of view of hellfire is bound to being without him. In the event that she were spared and he were lost, then she would be in damnation without him, and on the off chance that they were both spared, yet spared separated, then that would likewise be hellfire. In splendid quest for the finish of this radical contention, which has become perpetually unthinkable as she pursues it, she enthusiastically declines to trust that there is an option where they are both spared together or both denounced. The last stanza acts basically like the last couplet of a piece, completing the contention, however leaving an inquiry for the peruser to consider. On the other hand, even as she shuts the contention, it opens up a bit, in light of the fact that in this sadness she has discovered a sort of sustenance, however under supporting it is. There is something sacred about this sort of despondency, and "white" appears to be additionally to be "brilliant," as though in losing her desire for life following death, she has discovered another natural dedication to supplant it, and after that raised it to divine