Comparing Seventeenth Drought In T. S. Eliot And Emily Dickinson

Many Poets use their literary expression to convey their very own views and positions on involvements that go on in the world. The topic of religion and religious forethought is not exempt from such expression and in fact is commonly one of the most discussed topics in all of literature. Two poets that have used poetry to express their religious views are T.S. Eliot and Emily Dickinson. These two poets, like many before them, use poetry as a way of expressing many topics that they both understand and are troubled to the core with. Both of these Poets have struggled with the idea of religion and immortality within their lives. Eliot struggles most with grasping a connection with God because he believes that it is too difficult for humans …show more content…
Dickinson’s depressive state is prevalent as she places herself into the midst of a funeral, and she conveys to the reader what she feels and senses. In the first stanza, she describes how “mourners” come “to and fro” and were “treading.” The description of the “mourners” not just walking but “treading” to see her in the casket portrays an image of solemn remembrance, and they are all walking the way that one does in a funeral in a very specific manner. Also “treading” carries a connotation of a heavy burden and this can represent that she feels something heavy is oppressing her. Dickinson continues into the next stanza, when she says, “And when they all were seated/A service, like a drum-/Kept Beating – beating – till I thought/My mind was going numb.” These lines resemble a dullness to the way the funeral is playing out. The way her “mind was going numb” represents the dullness occurring at the funeral and the way that everybody may be saying the same thing over and over again “beating” at the subject of death. Dickinson references the coffin being lifted away when she says, “And then I heard them lift a box/And creak across my soul.” These lines represent Dickinson’s imagination bringing her into a dead body within a coffin while also simultaneously relating the coffin to the creaking and old nature of the soul. She first mentions “heaven” when she believes that when death comes she ponders “As all the heavens were a bell” almost as if to say that heaven is nothing more than the church, which is inferred by the “bells.” She also says that these “bells” are “but an ear/And I silence” meaning that the “bells” continue to ring, but her natural dead body contains “silence” ceasing to exist