My Life Stood A Loaded Gun

Emily Dickinson is known to be a poet of great renown. Even after many decades, her work continues to be a major influence in English literature. Her poems are known for their breaking of the standard poetic rules and dives deep into self-conscious of the human mind and society’s views of right and wrong. In particular is poem 754. Much of Emily Dickson’s poem, “My Life Stood – A Loaded”, places a large of amount of emphasizes in violence and narrates her time with her ‘Owner’. The speaker in this poem is subjected to the imposed gender dynamics of 19th century and tries to find an alternative around this. The speaker of the poem experiences powerful emotions and acts on them during the duration of the poem.

In the beginning, the speaker’s life is static. She is in a position where she cannot take action alone. The speaker narrates, “My Life Stood – A Loaded Gun.” By doing so, the speaker implies that her life is

Like a gun, when a person is shot, he or she does not get up because the person is dead. Thirdly, the Yellow Eye could be interpreted as the resounding light blast of light scene after a gun is shot and the emphatic thumb can be described as the trigger finger for a gun. The speaker uses these descriptions as a way to emphasize her power, her rage and aggression. Literary critique, Paula Bennet, argues the speakers aggressive attitude. Bennet agrees when she writes, “In the poem's terms, she is murderous. She is a gun. Her rage is part of her being. Indeed, insofar as it permits her to explode and hence to speak, rage defines her, unwomanly and inhuman though it is.” In short, what Bennet is saying is that the speaker uses her perspective as the gun to further express her anger and violence as being a part of her. Thus, the speaker speaking through the gun is a representation of who she