Difference Between Despair And Fear

In this poem, Dickenson depicts the particular word Despair through contrasting similes. The difference between Despair and Fear is like the difference between a wreck and its aftermath. The reader must expend thought on the wreck and its aftermath to determine how to assign Despair and Fear for she introduces one set in seemingly the reverse order of the other. This reverse is shown in the difference between how Despair and Fear is like that between “the instant of a Wreck” and “when the Wreck has been.” However, this poem brings up the peculiarity of the key word choice of “between:” because how can anything be “between” the instant and when something “has been?” Since the “instant of a Wreck” and “when the Wreck has been” are in two separate

time tenses, the future cannot be seen and thus nothing can be prevented meaning the fear is first and a natural reaction, while despair is taken into account in the aftermath while dwelling on what could have been different before the wreck. In the first stanza, the “One” who sits between the present and past is presumably anyone. The future cannot be seen and thus cannot be accounted by the “One”. Therefore, the lack of a future means that the “One” cannot see the difference between Despair and Fear in the moment, because one cannot wonder about the actual moment things, the wreck, go worse, and whether or not something could have prevented it. In the second stanza, Dickenson brings up the metaphor that the mind is like an eye that cannot see. The mind cannot see, our perception of knowing visually is contracted through our eyesight, which is dependent on a lot more than just how we see things, but how we perceive them. The mind cannot move like an eye, but it sits upon our head, within our head, just as content as the eye perceiving information.