The Letters Of Emily Dickinson Literary Devices

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The speaker poses a very familiar question, if you knew you were going to die would you tell anyone or keep it to yourself? In this case, the speaker will not say a word. The Riddle represents the passageway from this world to the next, and the speaker will walk through it without letting anyone know anything at all. Except for the first tetrameter line, the poem is written in iambic trimeter which gives the poem a light, sing-songy quality. The first stanza starts out with the speaker reasoning that it would be too difficult for them to confess to the garden and the Bee. In this context, the Bee symbolizes God, or the spirit of nature, as it watches over and pollinates everything. The speaker does not believe they would have the strength to announce their departure to the garden. The Bees lives in the garden, and in breaking it to the Bee, the speaker believes it would affect not only the garden but all that live in it. In her life, Dickinson was known more for her garden than for her poetry, and greatly valued the time she spent there. In The Letters of Emily Dickinson in a letter to Susie, Dickinson states, that the “Earth, so like to heaven, that I would hesitate, should the true one call away” (195). …show more content…

It is here that we suddenly recognize the irony between the tone and the subject matter. The last word of the second stanza is 'die' which lands with a very harsh tone to bring the irony of the poem to

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