Conflict within Belonging in Dickinson´s This is My Letter to the World and The Saddest Noise, The Sweetest Noise

A sense of belonging is an innate desire to identify ourselves with groups whilst simultaneously as this is broken by choice we ultimately must ‘belong.’ Through Dickinson’s poetic representations in This is My Letter to the World and The Saddest Noise, The Sweetest Noise, she expresses the conflict within belonging by juxtaposing the futility of acceptance whilst forming her individual identity. In contrast, modern illustrations of belonging are adopting in Luhrmann’s exotic film, Australia, and Doris Lessing’s short story, Flight. Utilising a plethora of literary, poetic and film devices, each composer explores the paradoxical nature of belonging by ultimately reflecting our desire for truth, whilst satisfying our thirst for approval.

Emily Dickinson portrays the intrinsic nature of belonging as conflict and tension arise through the understanding of one’s identity whilst conforming to society in This Is My Letter To The World. The emphatic title of this poem acts as a conflict in itself, with a “letter” acting as a symbol of intimacy yet it’s being proclaimed “to the world” as a hyperbole which is incongruent with the usual representation of a letter. The congenial address with reference to “my letter” evokes the speaker’s marginalised literary voice in context of women’s position and role in her society. The “world” is personified as it “never wrote to me” also connotes with her not belonging as it could be a matter of “the simple news” that outlines her bare truth in understanding the complexities of life as a profound implication of natures’ teachings. The final line of the first stanza expresses embracing nature as majestic with connotations of grace and dignity whilst it is qualified by the adjective “tender” implying th...

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...comfort he’s having with adapting to the idea of Alice being “old enough to go courting,” and contemplates life without belonging. “Then, clenched in the pain of loss, he lifted the bird on his wrist, and watched it soar,” reality seeps in as he realises that one day his granddaughter must leave it’s the nature of life. This parallels Emily Dickinson’s underlying ideal in The Saddest Noise, The Sweetest Noise as life must be endured without the ones we love.

A sense of belonging elicits a greater understanding of one’s true identity. Whilst Luhrmann and Lessing employ a range of literary and film techniques to underscore this notion, Dickinson instils a nihilistic interpretation wrought with paradoxes. However each composer effectively represents our intrinsic need to belong and fundamental thirst for acceptance and identity through their respective textual forms.