Connotation In Emily Dickinson's Hope Is The Thing With Feathers

As Dennis Gabor wrote, “Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with

them.” Poetry makes all people feel differently. According to www.poets.org, “Upon Emily

Dickinson’s death, her family discovered 40 hand bound volumes of nearly 1800 of her poems,

or fascicles as they are sometimes called.” Dickinson’s poems are very deep and sometimes

intense; at the same time they are inspiring. The themes of her most famous poem, “Hope is the

thing with feathers” includes how hope will always be there for people, watching over everyone.

It will never ask anything of anyone, no matter how much they ask of it; there is always a light at

the end of a dark tunnel. Although these are the main themes, poetry can be anything the

The themes in the poem

“Hope is the thing with feathers” written by Emily Dickinson, are revealed through connotation,

imagery, and word choice.

Firstly, connotation is any key poetic device(s) in a poem. Connotation is like the breeze on

the ocean on a calm day, it just makes everything flow together. Connotation reveals the overall

theme of the poem, “Hope is the thing with feathers” by Emily Dickenson through poetic

devices, diction, and rhyme scheme. Figurative language is one of the main pieces of poetic

devices, and shows up the most in the poem, revealing the theme. Many pieces of the poem

personify the actions or feelings of hope, especially when Emily says, “‘Hope’ is the thing with

feathers-/That perches in the soul-...” Hope doesn’t actually have feathers or perch in the soul,

but Dickenson is essentially saying that hope is always there. The theme is also shown by the

diction of the poem. The diction is how the poem is read, and reveals the theme through tone of

voice. For example, if the reader read the poem loudly and harshly, the theme of that poem

Authors have to be very

picky about their word choice in a short poem because they only have a trivial amount of words

to get their point across. In Emily’s poem, she uses word choice to convey the theme. The words

that show the themes are ‘perches,’ ‘sore,’ and ‘abash.’ When a bird sits on the branch as

opposed to perching, one may have a picture of a branch breaking when a bird comes to ‘sit’ on

the branch. This is especially true when Emily says, “‘...Hope’ is the thing with feathers-/That

perches in the soul-...” ‘Perches’ sounds delicate and gentle, just like hope is. If the author had

chosen a different word, such as ‘sits,’ the reader may have gotten a picture of a fat bird plopping

down on the soul, and the soul sagging because of the birds weight. That image doesn’t really

show the theme. Emily also uses the word ‘sore’ in her poem, which highlights the main topic

and tonality of the piece. ‘Sore’ is a higher vocabulary word than words such as ‘hard’, or

‘scary’. Words like ‘hard’ and ‘scary’ don’t channel the theme because they do not show the

maturity of hope. “...And sore must be the storm-...” wrote Dickinson. When the author