A Comparison Of I 'M Nobody And Dusting'

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Albert Einstein once said, “ Be a voice, not an echo.” In other words, are you a “voice”, or a “Somebody”? Or are you an “echo”, a “Nobody”? In the poems, “I’m Nobody, Who Are You?” by Emily Dickinson and “Dusting” by Julia Alvarez, both speakers are female. Both narrators of the poems want to be “who they are” or independent. They also want to be unique individuals; however, they approach this goal in different paths. We begin to understand the speaker’s uniqueness as we examine the structure of the poem. In Dickinson’s poem, the speaker is proud to be independent. The text says, “I’m Nobody.” This statement ends with a period as if to say, “I’m independent.” Then she says, “Who are you?” She’s having a conversation with another “Nobody”. …show more content…

The narrator is a young girl, living with her mother, yet she’s old enough to think about leaving home and being who she’s meant to be. The speaker is using “first person, narrative”, and her audience is herself. She’s talking to herself to boost her own confidence in her own individuality. This poem’s structure has no rhyming scheme or organized pattern, which could symbolize her desire to be free from her mother’s need to dictate her daughter’s life. Does freedom to a young girl, anxious to see the world , ever seem frightening? When she writes her name using all capital letters, it shows she has a need to be ‘important’. She writes her name in various ways: ‘script, capitals, scrawled, and scribbled’. This is an analogy for the various aspects of her personality. She will try new things like; travel, and see/experience new cultures. She will further her education by going to college. It says ‘.....She’s practicing signatures like scales’. This indicates her desire to become one of the best of whatever her goals will/might be, reinforcing her need to be an independent

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