Apparently With No Surprise

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Man and the Natural WorldSure,"Apparently with no surprise" is a nature poem, but don't go expecting a peaceful walk through a happy field. There are happy flowers here,but they're happy flowers who are getting beheaded....DeathOnce again it's time for everybody's favorite topic: death.Um, yay?"Apparently with no surprise" gives us an unflinching look at the inevitability of the D-word. The cool thing is that it doesn't...ReligionIn"Apparently with no surprise," wefind Emily going at oneof her favorite punching bags: God. That's right, the Big Guy, himself. After painting a sinister portrait of death, she caps the poem

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Yup, that's a little dark. This poem is unafraid toshow the brutal side of nature right along with the beautiful. What'sambiguousin thepoem is whether or not the speaker sees the destructive side of nature as something we should be mad about, or as something we should just accept. Really, you could read it several different ways. Maybe the speaker is angry about the fate of the flowers, maybe she's sad, maybe she's resigned, or maybe she's using it as ametaphorto question the nature of all life on earth.

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SummaryA happy-go-lucky flower gets its head chopped off by the frost. The sun sees the wholething from up above, but doesn't give a flip. Somewhere above, God watches it all thinking what a swell job he's done.Oh Dickinson. You're really quite something.Stanzas:-Lines 1-2Apparently with no surpriseTo any happy Flower*.The first thing we notice is that we've got a little personification going on, meaning that the poem is giving human traits to something nonhuman. *.Have you ever met a flower that was happy? Maybe it looked happybecause it wasall bright and cheerful, but chances are you were doinga little personifying yourself. As far as we know, flowers don't have emotions,so they can't be happy. But don't feel bad for them; they can't be sad either. The nextquestion becomes, then,what's the point of this personification? *.Emily has usedone of her favorite tricks and capitalizeda word that's not a proper noun—"Flower."Often in Dickinson poems, we take that as a hint that the thing is supposed tosymbolizesomething bigger.*.But if it's not just a flower, what is it? And about what exactly is it notsurprised?*.Guess we'll have to wait tillthe next line to see. Oh, the anticipation.

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*.Before we move on, though, we also notice someconsonancewith the repeated P sounds in both lines. Check out"Sound Check"for howthis weaves through the whole poem.*.Themeterof the poem also sticks out to ushere.*.The first line is in what's callediambictetrameter and the second is in iambic trimeter. When poems alternate between these two it can be calledballad meter.*.Yes, yes, that was a lot of complicated meter jargon. Just click your way to"Form and Meter"for the full explanation.Lines 3-4The Frost beheads it at its play—In accidental power—*.Whoa, didn't see that one coming. *.So the "happy Flower" is not surprised about getting beheaded by the "Frost." We guess that makes sense; winter comes and kills the flowers every year, so it's probably not much of a surprise.

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*.Emily is all about natureimageryso it's also no surprise to see it here. And again, in these lines, she personifies something out of nature. The Frost beheads the flower, right? That simultaneouslypersonifies the Frostandthe Flower. *.The Frost is doing the very human action of beheading somebody else, and the Flower seems human because it has a head to lop off. *.We notice that the word Frost is kicking it with a capital F, which again makes us wonder what it might symbolize. Well, it's doing a whole lot killing, so couldit be Death itself?*.Dun dun dun…*.It's likely. *.On that note, could the Flower then represent human life? Or all life? The poem doesn't tell us for sure. What do you think, Shmoopers?*.One more question before we go: why is the Frost's power described as"accidental"? Could it be thatthe speaker is commenting on how Frost doesn't purposely kill anything?*.It just does it because that's what it does. If that's the case,then it makes us think a little more about thepoem's stance on Death. Is the speaker angry at Death, or is she recognizing that it's just a fact of life? (Maybe a bit ofboth?)

Line 5The blonde Assassin passes on—*.Now the Frost is personified as an Assassin.*.Is this contradictory to the idea thatthe Frost kills accidentally? Assassins kill on purpose; it'stheir job and stuff. *.So maybe the poem is just relating the word"Assassin" withthe fact that the Frost has a killer nature in general. *.It's also interesting thatthe Frost is described as"blonde." We'venever seen yellow frost—unless it's beenpeed on, and we're guessing that's not what Emily's going for. *.It could be thatshe's just usingblonde to describe how pale Frost is. Or she could be describing how Frost looks later in the morning just before it"passes on" or melts away.*.Frost does looka bit "blonde" when the Sun shines on it, right?Lines 6-7The Sun proceeds unmovedTo measure off another Day*.Look, here's theSun that was giving the Frosta dye job earlier. And by dye job we mean melting it away.*.Now, it's like the cycle of killing has reached a whole new level. The Frostkilled the Flower; the Sunkilled the Frost.*.It's really starting to looklike this poem is all about cycles of life and death. *.The Sun is shown as kind of a sociopath about the whole thing. Allthis slaughter is going on, and it doesn't shed one tear. (Oh well, its tears would instantly evaporate anyway.) *.Instead, the Sun just does its job of"measur[ing] offanother Day." What could this mean in terms of symbolism?*.If the Frost killing the Flower is Deathending Life, could the uncaring Sun marking the hours represent Time? We're noStephen Hawking, but we're pretty sure Time doesn't give two flips aboutwhat happens to any of us.*.It's just Time.*.It does its thing.

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*.Before we go on, let's take a sec to appreciate the play on words Emily sneaks inhere: "proceedsunmoved." Get it? The poem means"unmoved" as in"uncaring," but it could also literally mean something thathasn't been moved. *.Here, though,"unmoved" is plunked down beside the word"proceeds" with means to moveforward. So there's a subtlelinguistic contradiction thrown in there. Ah wordplay. You never cease to be fun.

Line 8For an Approving God.*.Big surprise. Emily couldn't let the poem end without taking a parting shot at God, at the guy she loves to hate and hates to love. *.First, we go though this semi-sad scene of a Flower being murdered by the Frost. Thenwe're told that the Sun doesn'tcare about it. *.And now we're told that God islooking down on it all and patting himselfon the back fora job well done. Yeah, there's a good chance that this poem is going after God with asatiricalbite. *.How could anybody with aheart look down on Death without thinking it's a little sad at least?*.Okay, okay. To play Devil's advocate—well,maybe we should say God's advocate—we could alsoread the poem asnotbeing anattack on God. *.What if it's simply framingthe cycle of lifeand death and the fact that God created it?*.If a person loves God, thenhe or she has to love everything Godcreated. Even ifit seems cruel to us, we mightas well get over it. Could the poem be saying that we all ought to be more like the flower and be happy as we die?