The Human Condition In Emily Dickinson's Poetry

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Poetry is an art form in which the human language is written for its aesthetic qualities instead of notional and semantic content. Poetry can be discerned most of the time from text, which is language meant to express meaning in a more extensive and less condensed way. This doesn’t show that poetry is illogical, but shows how it is used to sometimes escape reality and expresses emotions in a compact form. In most poems the poet will focus on an aspect of the human condition. An example of this is how Emily Dickinson who’s poems shows evidence of the human predicament and how the human life is too short to end it well. Emily Dickinson has shown the Human Condition in her poems by revolving most aesthetics of her poems around death. Three poems …show more content…
Dickinson was educated at Amherst Academy and the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in her school years. She was a very bright student despite her missing long stretches of school due to both illness and depression. In 1848 she left the school for good, with no known reason. Her early influences as a teenager were Leonard Humphrey, the principal of Amherst Academy, and a family friend named Benjamin Franklin Newton who later introduced her to the poetry of William Wordsworth. It has been speculated by scholars that Emily Dickinson suffered from depression throughout her life and possibly had some fears that stopped her from leaving the house much. Emily was also entrusted with the care of her ailing mother. These reasons could lead to why Emily’s Poetry was dark …show more content…
When analysing this poem you can see how Dickinson outlines the subject matter of death stopping for her as if he were to court her to her grave and immortality being their chaperone. This basically means that death is always with her in her mind. The purpose is to reconfigure the representation of death. The poem presents death as a part of the life process. The theme might be calling upon individuals to re-examine their traditional opinions of death and bring about the change required in order to fully understand death 's role in highlighting life and the part of life that death is. The poem is written with a sense of almost calm understanding that death is a part of life and although it can be sad it is also just part of the human life. Many poetic devices are used in the poem to enhance its meaning, such as rhythm and repetition. The rhythm used through the poem is like the emotion, it’s smooth and calm in a way despite the poet being on a date with death, this is to further enhance the emotion. Repetition is then used in lines nine, eleven and twelve when the poet says they passed certain sceneries. She does this to show something symbolic, creating an impact as if they are passing from life to death. This supports how Emily Dickinson is focusing on the human condition of the human predicament and how death is always with you and coming

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