Pain and suffering are a regular part of life for many people. However, hope can be used to overcome these hardships. Emily Dickinson captured this idea best in her poem, "Hope Is the Thing With Feathers." She uses the speaker to convey this idea to the reader. In her writing, an extended metaphor is applied to compare hope with a bird. This bird resides in the human soul and continues to sing, even when life is difficult. Within this Rhyme Verse poem, composed in Iambic Trimeter, Dickinson uses various poetic devices such as an extended metaphor, syntax, rhyme, and imagery to convey an overarching theme that hope is something that inspires people to fly.
The first stanza emphasizes a word within the opening line. Dickinson almost defines the
...t is arguable that the birds fight is also a metaphor, implying the fight exists not only between birds but also in the father’s mind. Finally, the last part confirms the transformation of the parents, from a life-weary attitude to a “moving on” one by contrasting the gloomy and harmonious letter. In addition, readers should consider this changed attitude as a preference of the poet. Within the poem, we would be able to the repetitions of word with same notion. Take the first part of the poem as example, words like death, illness
The poem opens with iambic pentameter but the metrical foot consistently changes after the first line. Angelou uses six stanzas written in five quatrains and one tercet. The poet uses enjambment consistently to expand upon the vivid description between the two birds. The speaker projects the ostentatiousness of the human mind by using alternate end rhyme (downstream/wing and trill/still/hill) and slant rhyme (his wings are clipped... opens his throat to sing). The last two lines of the 2nd stanza (couplet) and the entire 3rd stanza is repeated in the 5th and 6th verses to amplify the significance of the perils of a closed mind, a mental state filled with darkness.
Moore begins the last stanza with an ambiguous “So”. Although one has a heightened awareness of mortality, one “behaves,” one keeps the ego disciplined. This is the same concept as that of the caged bird who, though held captive in a cruelly small space, continues to sing with all his heart. Despite the bird's lack of “satisfaction” because of his loss of flight and freedom, he knows “joy”.
The poem does not have a perfect rhyme; however, it still has some rhythms making the poem connected. For instance, “Immortality” (line 4) with “Civility” (line 8), “finally” and “Eternity”; they all make the poem has beautiful rhythms and poetic musicality. Dickinson also uses many art techniques; for instance, personification and metaphors, to make the poem more appealing. Dickinson personified “Death” as a gentleman in the poem, which it the most important personification in the poem. Dashes are another literary trope commonly used by Dickinson, in this poem she also uses many dashes. Dashes can make readers’ reader speed slow down. Hence, readers can have more time to consider the meaning of the poem. Besides that, the tempo of the poem also influenced by the use of capital letters for common nouns. The speaker of the poem is a woman who has an unusual trip with death and immortality, at the end of the trip, the woman realizes that death is not the end of the
She chooses this arrangement of verse in order to ordain a religious aspect into the poem, which does well to suite the theme and what she is fond of. As the recollection of the speaker’s death progresses, Dickinson uses the stanzas to mark the stages of the
Though Dickinson’s poem may initially seem transcendental, it can also be interpreted as a mixture of Emerson’s transcendental ideas and those that support the notion of imagination. Dickinson’s poem serves as a response to Emerson’s ideas because she adds on to his thoughts and unites his idea that there is oneness present in the world with the notion that imagination and sight serve as a bridge that connects human consciousness with nature to create this oneness that Emerson believes in. In the first stanza, the narrator says, that “I got my eye put out” (1), showing that she can now only see from one eye because of the singular use of eyes. Because she only talks of having lost sight in one eye, it can be assumed that she laments the limited vision that is now provided by her remaining eye. The narrator’s fragmented and limited vision caused by the loss of one eye is captured through the extensive use of dashes, which are used to separate the sentences, making them give a feeling of disarray and disjointedness.
spite of her hardships, she is happy through her words and expressions in the poem.
In conclusion, Dickinson's form helps the reader begin to comprehend the poem. Figurative language is one of the literary elements that Dickinson uses. to help convey hidden messages to the reader.
No matter how bad things may seem, there is always hope for things to ameliorate. When people believe that the future will be promising, they can have something to look forward to as opposed to dwelling on the past or the problems of the present. This hope can give a person a positive outlook on life and motivate him or her to look past what is happening in the present. In the poems “Hope is the Thing with Feathers” by Emily Dickinson and “The Darkling Thrush” by Thomas Hardy, they both convey similar messages about hope. Both works display the theme of hope being present at all times no matter how bad things may seem and is a consistent option for anyone in need of help.
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.
In the first two stanzas of the poem, some images that are described and seen are the sun rising “A ribbon at a time”, steeples swimming in amethyst, birds starting to sing, and “The hills untied their bonnets”. The main theme of these first stanzas are the sunrise and the theme of waking up in the morning. The sunrise theme is shown in a large amount of Dickinson’s poems. One line in the first stanza, “ The news like squirrels ran.” is an example that symbolizes the busy life that we have.
bird as the metaphor of the poem to get the message of the poem across
Emily Dickinson’s poem, “Success is counted sweetest” ironically explains a part of human nature through establishing a paradox. The paradox presented states that success becomes more tangible and easier to appreciate the further one is from it. The poem creates a complicated metaphor that extends throughout the poem to guide the reader through the process of understanding this idea. The specific implementations of rhyme employed by the poem help connect lines of parallel meaning within this metaphor to allow the reader to fully comprehend such a dynamic claim. Similarly, the poem benefits from the use of various sound devices which establish a tone that is essential to the overall understanding of how the level of appreciation and comprehension of success directly relates to how distant one’s self is from success.
R.W.Franklin. “’Hope’ is the thing with feathers –.” The Poems of Emily Dickinson. Harvard University Press. N.e. 1999. 314. Print.
...er readers. Dickinson’s use of literary devices and her creativity enables her to imaginatively describe the beauty and grace from a simple and familiar observation. It is through her use of tone, imagery, and sound that she exploits a keen sense of respect for at the very least the little bird, if not also nature itself. Dickinson recreates and expresses the magnificence and smoothness of the bird soaring across the sky. She uses tone to create the mood to emphasize the theme. She uses sound and imagery to not only tell the reader about the awesome flight of the bird, but to help the reader experience and connect to the little bird and nature in hope that they too will learn to respect nature.