William Austin Dickinson

Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson were both highly influential writers in the 20th century. Dickinson portrayed the ideas of realism while Whitman portrayed the ideas of the transcendentalist movement. Whitman spent his youth in New York and became a teacher at the age of 17. He eventually quit his job as a teacher because he believed it absurd to force students to conform to the system of society. Dickinson’s life was quite different. She was an agoraphobic who spent the majority of her time in…

Death" Dickinson has written over a hundred poems in her complex life. She writes poems so neatly and secretive, she has become a very famous poet. In her poem "Because I Could Not Stop for Death," she writes of a woman's "date with death." Unlike other stories about death, she illustrates death not as a reaper or even a menace, but as a polite gentleman. All of Dickinson's poems are about death and immorality. She portrays great detail of their meaning to the poems she writes. Dickinson is…

Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost compare writing styles that are in stark contrast with one another; Dickinson with her dash-filled short stanzas, and Frost with his rhythmic and melodic flow, are each easily distinguishable at first glance. They do, however, seem to share common interests in much of their subject matter. Both poets write a great amount about nature and death; darkness and night are the common theme for Dickinson’s “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” and Frost’s “Acquainted with…

Emily’s View of the Soul The afterlife is a mystery to all mankind, and everyone has their own theory as to what surmises after we die. Emily Dickson provides two different theories in her poems “If I Should Die” and “Because I Couldn’t Stop For Death.” In the first, she alludes to the sense that death is the extinction of a soul, but in the latter she sees the soul living on for eternity after the bodies physical death. “If I Should Die” is a poem that eliminates the harshness of death but…

“I heard a fly buzz when I died”, by Emily Dickinson, is a poem that describes what a woman is hearing and seeing as she dies. Emily Dickinson uses imagery, similes, and metaphors to convey her theme; death is mysterious and no one knows for sure what happens in the afterlife. In the first stanza the speaker uses imagery when she states “I heard a fly buzz when I died; The stillness in the air” (lines 1-2). The speaker creates an image of a woman dying. The room she is dying in is so quiet that…

parts of them. Another feature of Twitter appropriate in this context is the “at sign” (@). Usually, it’s used in tweets to reference people, calling them out almost, and the literary equivalent of this symbol would be the allusion. So, in her poems Dickinson would be able to signify to the reader that she’s using an allusion, specifically when she alludes to people, all while keeping it in the spirit of…

Indirect Guidance Emily Dickinson is a very unique and distinct writer. She has a way of indirectly sending the reader a message. In her poems “Before I got my eye put out” and “We grow accustomed to the dark” she conveys a message in her poems that is not clear cut. You as a reader must analyze her poems and find the message that she is trying to get her readers to see. In this analytical essay I will be breaking down both “Before I got my eye put out” and “We grow accustomed to the dark”. I…

Harold Bloom, a Yale literary critic, states “ Dickinson [...] has a mind so original and powerful that we scarcely have begun, even now, to catch up with her”. Poet Emily Dickinson is one of the two pioneers for American poetry, along with Walt Whitman. Although both are prolific writers, the two were radically different; as Whitman toured New England promoting his work, Dickinson barricaded herself in her house. Dickinson’s use of various poetic techniques perfectly illustrates her agonizing…

gaunt, and small,” (21) it is able to bring a great amount happiness into ones life. This shows how one does not necessarily need to be physically strong in order to help others and that some of the happiest moments in life may be the small ones. As Dickinson also implies, hope can be available to the least powerful people and some of the strongest can be weak and in need. The extremely ecstatic tone throughout the end of the poem provides a huge contrast from the beginning of the poem showing…

In “The Last Night that She Lived,” Emily Dickinson takes an in-depth look into what life and death mean to her, along with delving into what the reader might see in life and death. Throughout the poem Emily Dickinson describes the emotions of the visitors as they wait and watch for a loved one to pass on. In examining death and the human response, Emily Dickinson 's poem is centered on how the people in the poem experience a change in how they view death. In the beginning of the poem the…