In Emily Dickinson’s “My life had stood – a Loaded Gun,” the speaker’s life is personified as a gun. Dickinson lived in the Victorian era, where women where bound by societal standards. Women, for example, had to be married by the time they were 18, had no right to vote, and women who shared the same social status as Dickinson could not vote (Myah). To convey this, Dickinson uses dashes to illustrate the compression that women felt, metaphors to undermine then illustrate a greater meaning of the poem, and structure along with a specific choice of diction to describe the relationship. The complex relationship between the owner and the speaker which illustrates the speaker’s experience in the man’s world.
The poem begins with declaring the subject, “My Life” which had stood like a “Loaded Gun.” The woman in the poem is the gun, and there she stood filled with anger, unable to express herself in this society. There is a sense of this suppression of anger illustrated by the “Loaded Gun.” A “Loaded Gun” is a powerful image
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The word “Sovereign” is a powerful word meaning all-powerful. The use of this specific diction in this context suggest that the woman is entering this new territory or illegal territory for women that she had not previously been exposed to. Suggesting that with her new marriage, she is able to explore these territories or rights. The word Doe in “We hunt the Doe” is important to note because Dickinson specifically employs feminine diction, where she could have easily replaced with a word such as “deer.” This doe represents the limited power of women, and the hunter “hunts the doe” (Gilligan). Dickinson’s female speaker is also one of the Doe’s hunters. This is significant because women often had to eradicate a deviate of themselves and cope with a given lifestyle. The male in the world are hunting or shutting down the women when they become too
The readers are apt to feel confused in the contrasting ways the woman in this poem has been depicted. The lady described in the poem leads to contrasting lives during the day and night. She is a normal girl in her Cadillac in the day while in her pink Mustang she is a prostitute driving on highways in the night. In the poem the imagery of body recurs frequently as “moving in the dust” and “every time she is touched”. The reference to woman’s body could possibly be the metaphor for the derogatory ways women’s labor, especially the physical labor is represented. The contrast between day and night possibly highlights the two contrasting ways the women are represented in society.
Upon first look, Billy Collins “Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes” seems to be a wild fantasy for Emily Dickinson that he is entertaining. Upon closer examination, however, the poem reveals his subconscious desire to have sex with his mother and his frustration about his inability to do so, resulting in the displacement of his sexual desires onto Dickinson.
During the late romantic period, two of history’s most profound poets, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, emerged providing a foundation for, and a transition into Modern poetry. In its original form, their poems lacked the characteristics commonly attributed to most romantic poets of the mid to late nineteenth century who tended to utilize “highly stylized verses, having formal structures, figurative language and adorned with symbols” (worksheet). Unique and “eccentric use of punctuation” as well as “irregular use of meter and rhyme” were the steppingstones for this new and innovative style of writing (worksheet). Even though these two writers rejected the traditional approach, both remained firmly dedicated to their romantic idealism of the glass of water being “half full” opposed to “half empty.” Noted for his frequent practice of catalogs and parallelism, Whitman stirred up much controversy with his first edition of “leaves of Grass” in 1855. Many critics responded negatively to the ...
Since the beginning of the essay the narrator and her father lived in a house “like the Civil War battleground it was” (Kennedy 146). The narrator did not agree with her dad’s political views or understood his love of guns. Contrast to her twin sister, the narrator has a very artistic personality. Her difference in personality caused the narrators frustration towards her father. “Dad and I started bickering in earnest when I was fourteen” (Kennedy 147). The author shows the narrator and her father had started seeing different since she was young. The narrator was frustrated with her father stubbornness and the way she felt she was being treated. “My domain was the cramped, cold space known as the music room” (Kennedy 148). The narrator felt like she was lonely and excluded from her family because of her difference in views. As the narrator’s father tries to get her somewhat involved in his love of cannons and guns, the narrator notices that they have similar interests. “I’ve given this a lot of thought- how to convey the giddiness I felt when the cannon shot off” (Kennedy 150). In addition, the narrator and her father both shared an enjoyment for the loud noise the cannon produced and although they both had opposing political views, they were involved in politics. The author
“Here bullet” is a poem by Brian Turner in which the persona is struggling to coup with the situation in which he finds himself. In this poem the persona is able to establish the low point in which they have reached with lines such as “If a body is what you want, / Then here is bone and gristle and flesh.” (LL 1-2). This line establishes right from the onset of the poem that the persona is at wits in. The poem could leave a first time reader of it wondering how the persona reached this point. This point in which the persona is fantasying about death with lines like “Here is where I complete the word you bring/ Hissing through the air, here is where I moan” (LL 10-11).
She does this by using figurative language. The author temporarily deviates from the normal topic of the poem, dandelions, to describe her home life. She ties it into the topic of dandelions though, because the negative attention the dandelions receive is similar to “how life parachutes” to her home. The way she personifies life, as if it comes to her house, suggests to the reader that she does not feel like she is in control of her life. Life is coming to her, as opposed to her driving her own life. Specifically, she feels her life is controlled by her parents, and the excessive attention they pay to her is to blame. She receives plenty of attention from her parents because she is “their jewel.” However, this attention is often too much. The author metaphorically compares her mother’s attention to being assaulted by "uzis of reproach.” Reproach is a synonym for disapproval. Her parents’ excessive attention causes them to notice everything she does wrong and to express their disapproval. This gun reference reinforces the idea that the attention is negative and unwanted, because guns are typically associated with negative ideas like death and violence in the reader’s mind. This negative attention sparks the author’s anger and angst. This is evident in the change of tone and rhythm. At one point, the author calls home
She questions “why should I be my aunt / or me, or anyone?” (75-76), perhaps highlighting the notion that women were not as likely to be seen as an induvial at this time in history. Additionally, she questions, almost rhetorically so, if “those awful hanging breasts -- / held us all together / or made us all just one?” (81-83). This conveys the questions of what it means to be a woman: are we simply similar because of “awful hanging breasts” as the speaker of the poem questions, or are we held together by something else, and what is society’s perception on this? It is also interesting to note Bishop’s use of parenthesis around the line “I could read” (15). It may function as an aside for the reader to realize that the six year old girl can in fact read, but also might function as a wink to the misconstrued notion throughout history that women were less educated and didn’t
Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she spent most of her life with her younger sister, older brother, semi-invalid mother, and domineering father in the house that her prominent family owned. As a child, she was curious and was considered a bright student and a voracious reader. She graduated from Amherst Academy in 1847, and attended a female seminary for a year, which she quitted as she considered that “’I [she] am [was] standing alone in rebellion [against becoming an ‘established Christian’].’” (Kort 1) and was homesick. Afterwards, she excluded herself from having a social life, as she took most of the house’s domestic responsibilities, and began writing; she only left Massachusetts once.
On the surface the poem seems to be a meditation on past events and actions, a contemplative reflection about what has gone on before. Research into the poem informs us that the poem is written with a sense of irony
In Dickinson’s “MyLife Had Stood—A Loaded Gun”, was viewed literally, thinking the poem was regarding a gun and its owner. After reading the poem over and over again the reader picks up on the emotions the writer portrays. Dickinson’s poetry carries deep emotion with her personal life and views. She uses the gun to speak out everything masculine: “Loaded Gun” (1) cruel not pleasant, “hunt the Doe” (6) kills not...
In conclusion, it can be stated the examples of Emily Dickinson's work discussed in this essay show the poetess to be highly skilled in the use of humor and irony. The use of these two tools in her poems is to stress a point or idea the poetess is trying to express, rather than being an end in themselves. These two tools allow her to present serious critiques of her society and the place she feels she has been allocated into by masking her concerns in a light-hearted, irreverent tone.
Vendler, Helen. Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2010. 118-20. Google Books. Google. Web. 5 April. 2014. .
The effect of the repetition of the sentence “America is a gun” throughout this poem emphasizes the speaker's point of view of what image best represents America. It stresses that America is best represented with a violent and threatening object. Guns are detrimental weapons. Therefore, calling a country “a gun” is an insult. Thus, the repetition of the sentence “America is a gun” plays an essential role in conveying the author’s theme that the default of the united states is the lack of regulation of firearms.
Hughes Gertrude Reif. (Spring 1986). Subverting the Cult of Domesticity: Emily Dickinson’s Critique of Woman’s Work. Legacy. Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 17-2
Emily Dickinson, a radical feminist is often expressing her viewpoints on issues of gender inequality in society. Her poems often highlight these viewpoints. Such as with the case of her poem, They shut me up in Prose. Which she place herself into the poem itself, and address the outlining issues of such a dividend society. She is often noted for using dashes that seem to be disruptive in the text itself. Dickinson uses these disruption in her text to signify her viewpoints on conflictual issues that reside in society. From the inequality that women face, to religion, to what foreseeable future she would like to happen. All of her values and morales are upheld by the dashes that Dickinson introduces into her poems.