Dickinson’s fascination with death and the darker controversial themes within her work make her poetry deeply compelling, and unsettling. “I died for Beauty—but was scarce…” is no exception to this, with Dickinson’s focus on the powerlessness of the human condition exposing the uncomfortable truth that every aspect of human life is obliterated at death.
Like many of Dickinson’s poems, this poem uses an ABCB rhyme scheme, yet the poem has a particularly regular meter, with the first and third lines in each stanza in iambic tetrameter, while the second and fourth lines are iambic trimeter. This routine regular meter could be interpreted as a reflection of the calm nature of the speakers despite their situation, suggesting that ultimately death is routine. In this poem, as in some of her others, Dickinson asks “the reader to accept the fiction that …show more content…
. . for Truth”. Yet whilst both speakers die "for" these ideals, the precise meaning here is a little more indeterminable, did they die in the cause of beauty and truth or to achieve these ideals. The association between beauty and truth in this poem is created through Dickinson’s use of parallel language in describing the speakers' deaths. Buried in "adjoining" rooms and described as "brethren" and “kinsmen”, it seems that the two are very alike and yet they are not the same, but buried apart. One of the most interesting linguistic choices is the question "why I failed?”. Crucially the word is "failed," rather than “died”. Linking back to the associations drawn between Beauty and Truth, the idea that they are equal is suggested in that in their perfect forms, they are equally impossible. The powerful underlying tone gives the reader chills and indeed Dickinson uses a dash here to strategically and emphatically interrupt the flow. The men are "Brethren" who lived very different lives, both striving for different goals, yet in death, they are the
Like many of Dickinson’s poems, this poem uses an ABCB rhyme scheme, yet the poem has a particularly regular meter, with the first and third lines in each stanza in iambic tetrameter, while the second and fourth lines are iambic trimeter. This routine regular meter could be interpreted as a reflection of the calm nature of the speakers despite their situation, suggesting that ultimately death is routine. In this poem, as in some of her others, Dickinson asks “the reader to accept the fiction that …show more content…
. . for Truth”. Yet whilst both speakers die "for" these ideals, the precise meaning here is a little more indeterminable, did they die in the cause of beauty and truth or to achieve these ideals. The association between beauty and truth in this poem is created through Dickinson’s use of parallel language in describing the speakers' deaths. Buried in "adjoining" rooms and described as "brethren" and “kinsmen”, it seems that the two are very alike and yet they are not the same, but buried apart. One of the most interesting linguistic choices is the question "why I failed?”. Crucially the word is "failed," rather than “died”. Linking back to the associations drawn between Beauty and Truth, the idea that they are equal is suggested in that in their perfect forms, they are equally impossible. The powerful underlying tone gives the reader chills and indeed Dickinson uses a dash here to strategically and emphatically interrupt the flow. The men are "Brethren" who lived very different lives, both striving for different goals, yet in death, they are the