Analysis Of Emily Dickinson's Painhas An Element Of Blank

The highly introverted, American poet Emily Dickinson liked to play with intellectual curiosity, psychological extremities, and emotional clarity within her poetry that was not yet published until after her death in 1886. The unsettling intensity of her vision and ability to set out deep matters of our psyche in “simple” terms set her and her poetry apart from any other poet known today. Dickinson’s seclusion during her lifetime proved to have great influence over her literary works, specifically with the reoccurring theme of pain. However, Dickinson wrote “aphoristically”, meaning that she expressed renowned value into few words within her writing. For instance, her pieces, After great pain, a formal feeling comes, Pain­has an Element of Blank, …show more content…
Her analysis of the feeling of pain focuses on only a few of the minor degrees of pain that are inherent parts of the experience. She draws in on an "Element of Blank" that she introduces in her opening line. When encountering pain, she proposes that "blankness" possesses a vagueness that is a potential presentation of the pain, impersonally. In this context, this “blankness” is suggestive of a quality of depersonalization that is supported by the following lines in the poem. “It cannot recollect When it begun” (2). The inability to recollect holds a significant question of whether Dickinson chose to personify “pain” by giving “it” human-like characteristics, or is impersonalizing the humanity of pain itself. In addition, Dickinson describes pain as being “infinite” and in “periods” continually emphasizing the entrapment that agony causes a person. The poem then concludes with her first word: "Pain." The depersonalization of the narrator is so complete no other feelings are palpable; thus, the poem encloses no other words which express the physical perception of …show more content…
Beginning with the first line, that is also the title, she reflects upon two instances that were so overwhelming and mortifying, they are compared to her life veritably shutting down, and closing. She contemplates how heavy the emotional burden of another immense suffering would be and claims it to be “so huge, so hopeless to conceive”, just as devastating as the prior two (4). In view of this, “huge” is used in the sense of a synonym, “tremendous” meaning competent of making one tremble while “hopeless to conceive” indicates the impossibility to withstand another ordeal. In other words, the speaker knows that there can be no preparation for the next, perhaps inevitable, “close”. Within the final two lines of her poem, the comparison between the current world and both heaven and hell depict where we know our loved ones have resided. With a distant focus, “parting” may be used as a euphemism for the undertaking of death. Yet, in this sense, the unavoidable “close”, which the narrator awaits, is the everlasting separation that occurs at the end of life. As the poem nears its end, it uses its sense of disparity in hopes of the reader commiserating for her loss and understanding the tremendous amount of misery she survived