Style And Theme In Emily Dickinson's Poetry

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Introduction The aim of this paper is to discuss the consistencies of style and theme in Emily Dickinson’s poetry. Emily Dickinson was born in 1830 and raised in Amherst, Massachusetts. During her childhood, Emily stayed in her home and rarely went out to see the world and very few people came to see her at her home making her world very small and lonely. On a trip to Philadelphia, Emily met Sir Charles Wadsworth who is believed to have influenced some of her poems about “heartsickness” when he went back to West Coast. In her adult year Emily distant herself from the outer world as she spent much of her time with family and reading lots of books (Sewall 3-5). Unlike most poets of her time who shaped their views, Emily Dickinson explored Any keen observer can note that Emily Dickinson used images from domestic activities, nature, religion, fashion, and medicine to explore universal themes such as immorality and death, love, and the wonders of nature. At times Emily Dickinson writes about uses humor and at times pathos as she writes about her subjects. Having in mind that Emily was full humor one can easily distinguish between the tones behind her words. For this paper “I heard a Fly buzz - when I died-”, “My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun -” and “Because I could not stop for Death -” are some of the poems I selected to assess the consistency of style and theme in Emily Dickinson’s poetry. All the selected three poems are lyrics and clear short poems that have only a single speaker who expresses feelings and thoughts. Compared to most lyric poetry, Emily Dickinson’s speaker in her poems is repeatedly identified in the first person as “I.” In her poems “Because I could not stop for Death-” (1) and “I heard a Fly buzz - when I died-” (1) Dickinson engages her readers by her use of the first persons in the first In most of her poems, Dickinson uses material things and abstract concepts to explain each other but how she relates them remains unpredictable and very complex. In her poem “I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -”, the use of a fly brings out a disturbing and touchy feeling. Using the fly in the poem creates a change in the poem and makes it sound like a horror story rather than a calming poem about the end of life (Bachinger 12-15). The poem “I Could Not Stop for Death” make the reader have a feeling of forward movement through the 2nd and the 3rd stanzas. In line 5, Dickinson starts describing the journey of death with both a slow and forward movement as can be seen in the line’s words “We slowly drove-He knew no haste.” In the 3rd stanza the speed of the journey of death increases, the poem gets faster the life continues. Finally in line 17 and 18, the motion slows down and Dickinson writes, “We paused before a House that seemed / A Swelling of the Ground-.” These two lines give the reader a feeling of the slow ending of

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