Despite being brought up in polar opposite circumstances Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman both made similar statements through poetry regarding the Civil War. In ¨A Hand-Mirror,¨ Walt Whitman describes a person that looks okay from the outside, but it is revealed that the inside of this person is extremely unhealthy. Mr. Whitman uses this person as a substitute for the United States of America during the Civil War. ¨Come up from the Fields Father,¨ is about a mother whose son has died in the war effort and the toll it take on the family. In contrast, Miss Dickinson’s “They dropped like Flakes,” describes the scene of soldiers dying at the Battle of Chancellorsville. Also in “Success is counted sweetest,” Dickinson assesses the John Brown raid
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The poem, “They dropped like Flakes,” Emily Dickinson illustrates The Battle of Chancellorsville and the death that occurs there. Miss Dickinson creates a few metaphors for the falling soldiers and one of them is, “They dropped like stars,” (2). This creates a sense of beauty for the reader although what the stars represent is a somber and grim event. Another figurative device that she composes is, “Like Petals from a Rose,” (3). This literary element relates more to the bloody bodies, and Dickinson added this line specifically for the gore because even though the figurative devices were to show the Civil War in a different light they still needed to be based off of the war. So Miss Dickinson utilized elegance to represent a concept that is far from beauty. Even though the poets didn’t address the same topic to metaphor, they each captured broad concepts of death or destruction in conjunction with the Civil …show more content…
In Walt Whitman’s “A Hand-Mirror” he achieves talking about the whole country in specific details relating to the destruction that the country is going through. Whitman speaks about the destruction in relation to vital body organs saying that the United States has, “Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous,” (6). The rotting lungs are in reference to the cities being burned due to the war. Emily Dickinson does the same thing just with a different concept. Dickinson writes about the way soldiers died in the Battle of Chancellorsville saying, “They dropped like Flakes,” (1). The flakes in this poem represent the soldiers, and the detail that sticks out is that the soldiers didn’t fall, they dropped. Both of these writers accomplish depicting a concept in very few words which is quite a
The poem, “They dropped like Flakes,” Emily Dickinson illustrates The Battle of Chancellorsville and the death that occurs there. Miss Dickinson creates a few metaphors for the falling soldiers and one of them is, “They dropped like stars,” (2). This creates a sense of beauty for the reader although what the stars represent is a somber and grim event. Another figurative device that she composes is, “Like Petals from a Rose,” (3). This literary element relates more to the bloody bodies, and Dickinson added this line specifically for the gore because even though the figurative devices were to show the Civil War in a different light they still needed to be based off of the war. So Miss Dickinson utilized elegance to represent a concept that is far from beauty. Even though the poets didn’t address the same topic to metaphor, they each captured broad concepts of death or destruction in conjunction with the Civil …show more content…
In Walt Whitman’s “A Hand-Mirror” he achieves talking about the whole country in specific details relating to the destruction that the country is going through. Whitman speaks about the destruction in relation to vital body organs saying that the United States has, “Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous,” (6). The rotting lungs are in reference to the cities being burned due to the war. Emily Dickinson does the same thing just with a different concept. Dickinson writes about the way soldiers died in the Battle of Chancellorsville saying, “They dropped like Flakes,” (1). The flakes in this poem represent the soldiers, and the detail that sticks out is that the soldiers didn’t fall, they dropped. Both of these writers accomplish depicting a concept in very few words which is quite a