Death In Emily Dickenson Essay, Research Paper

With the idea of decease, many people become terrified as if it were some

animal skulking behind a door ready to capture them at any minute. Unlike many,

Emily Dickinson was infatuated with decease and sought after it merely to seek and assist

answer the many inquiries which she pondered so frequently. Her poesy best illustrates

the replies as to why she wrote about it invariably. She explains her ground for

composing poesy, ? I had a panic I could state to none-and so I sing, as the Boy does by

the Burying Ground-because I am afraid. ? ( Johnson xxiii ) . There is no uncertainty that

Emily Dickinson is frightened of decease and the unknown life after it. To let go of her

frights, she merely? sings? her vocal in poesy. Still, small is known to why she genuinely

wrote of decease and life after decease ; yet it is evident that many have tried to research the

topic at manus.

Turning up in the 1830? s, Emily Dickinson spent about her full life in the

Amherst, Massachusetts, house were she composed many of the unforgettable poesy

she is celebrated for today. Dickinson, frequently labeled as? the Virginal nun of Amherst? ,

has been said to be? anything but a entire hermit? ( Conarro 71 ) . She spent her clip

reading influential books and magazines such as the Springfield, Massachusetts

Republican, the Bible, George Eliot, Keats, Emerson, Sir Thomas Brown, and

particularly Shakespeare. Emily Dickinson besides spent legion hours be givening to her

garden and enjoying the familiarity of long-distance relationships ( Conarro 71-2 ) . One

such relationship was a sermonizer named Wadsworth, whom she loved in a heartfelt way.

Johnson points out the ground for her act of privacy was that, ? Wadsworth? s

remotion was so terrorizing that she feared she might ne’er be able to command her

emotions of her ground without his counsel? ( Johnson xxii ) . Because Wadsworth

was her lone wise man at the clip, Dickinson feared she would hold no 1 to turn to for

way. To add to the disturbance of the decease of a loved one, the force per unit areas from her

male parent to make good in school plagued her so much that? she found her merely safety in

privacy? ( Capps 15 ) . Dressed in the sublimating colour of white, Dickinson turned to

life in the privacy of her sleeping room composing down her frights and strivings of decease and the

hope of life after decease ( Conarro 71 ) . ? Withdrawing from traditional ways of

visual perception, she separated her consciousness from about all others and tried to understand

the phenomenon that is consciousness itself? ( Bu*censored* 1 ) .

There were many things which Emily Dickinson tried to understand, but she

was peculiarly interested in the enigma of decease. It is apparent in her poesy that, ? the

thought of decease was for her the overwhelming, ubiquitous emotional experience of her

life, and strongly influenced her poesy, particularly in its strength and profusion?

( Ferlazzo 64 ) . It overtook her ideas and became a compulsion which she had to

satisfy ; yet Dickinson would non confide in the church to assist supply the? nutrient? she

hungered for. Ford explains that she believed? that holding felt no interior transition,

she could non candidly acknowledge commitment to a church? ( 18 ) . He goes on to state

that, ? this refusal was really likely a beginning of diffidence and torture, but a load

possibly made easier to bear through her poesy? ( 18 ) . Eventhough Emily Dickinson

did non go to church, ? the bosom of her preoccupation was her spiritual

motive? ( 18 ) . Her inquiries of immortality puzzled her and the concerns of decease

absorbed her ideas, for she did non cognize whether to believe in the after-life or non.

David Rutledge of The Explicator writes that, ? in the presence of decease, the whole

thought of religion has come to look nil more than a barbarous fraud. The concluding sense is that

decease is the punch line to a bad gag that has gone excessively far? ( 83 ) . It seems as if

Dickinson? s fright may be that decease may non be so benevolent after all. The lone manner

she could of all time cognize the tr

ue reply would be if she were to decease. Yet why would one

put on the line their life for the unknown? Ford continues by explicating that, ? for her, the thought of

immortality was non to be grasped as an abstraction, but by comparing to concrete

esthesis? ( 14 ) . Emily Dickinson wants to really see life after decease and non

merely hear about it. ? It may be that Man? s ability to anticipate decease is at the nucleus of

faith in general ; surely Emily Dickinson saw the two as closely related? ( Ford

19 ) . Dickinson is so eager, yet hesitant at the same clip, to see? heaven? and the

fantastic life without sorrow or danger to come & # 8211 ; if there is one.

Emily Dickinson? s feelings of hurting and desperation are revealed throughout her

poesy as a call of wretchedness and a manner out of her heartache. Keller explains that? Dickinson

found & # 8230 ; that certain linguistic communication constructions were for her a step of security, that she was

vulnerable to unfavorable judgment, that she was intentionally nearsighted about society? s signifiers, that she

went wild, that she found poesy merriment and good story ( 7 ) . Poetry was a friend to Emily

Dickinson whom she could show all of her interior ideas and non be criticized.

Bloom adds a farther penetration to better understand the causes of her compulsion for decease:

The subject of extreme hurting has made inevitable the speculation that some

experience of unusual strength was the beginning of it. She distinguishes

wretchedness, throughout her poesy, as a injury that can be relieved from

enduring & # 8230 ; .yet these milder achings and heartaches did non dispute her

powers of analysis & # 8230 ; . she merely separates the lesser pains that will mend

from the greater strivings that will non and chooses the latter as her particular

concern & # 8230 ; .her consequence of world is achieved non by an speech pattern on pleasance

or hurting but by her dramatic usage of their interaction. ( 9-10 )

It is evident from Emily Dickinson? s poesy that she experienced much somberness and

wretchedness throughout her life and had many confusing inquiries which were eager to be

answered. Her poesy was meant to be a manner for her to show her feelings of heartache

and trouble so that she may happen relief apart from desperation.

? From the clip when Emily Dickinson foremost began to compose poesy until her last

melting pencil Markss on tatterdemalion spots of paper, the enigma of decease absorbed her? ( Ford

18 ) . At a insouciant glimpse through her verse forms and letters, she reveals legion allusions

to such topics as infinity, immortality, eternity, God, and decease. She was profoundly

concerned with spiritual values and tidal bore to look into the enigma of decease and all of

its ambiguities ( 18 ) . Eventhough Dickinson could non happen all of the replies to her

inquiries on life and decease as a whole, she found a manner to barricade out the injury and

solitariness she felt indoors. Writing poesy became her felicity and rejuvenated her

spirit in a manner that nil else could. She could allow travel of all of her feelings inside

that were merely spliting to be heard. Emily Dickinson had eventually found security in the

thick of her fears-poetry!

Bloom, Herold. Emily Dickinson. New York, Chelsea House Publishesrs, 1985.

Budick, E. M. Emily Dickinson and the Life of the Language. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985.

Capps, Jack L. Wmily Dickinson? s Reading, 1836-1886. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1966.

Connarroe, Joel. Six American Poets. New York: Random House, 1991.

Ferlazza, Paul J. Critical Essays on Emily Dickinson. Boston: Massachusetts, G.K. Hall & A ;

Co. , 1984.

Ford, T.W. Heaven Beguiles the Tired. Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1968.

Lucas, D.D. Emily Dickinson and Riddle. Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 1969.

Johnson, Thomas H. The Poems of Emily Dickinson. Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1968.

Keller, Karl. The Lone Kangoroo Among the Beauty. Old line state: The John? s Hopkins University Press, 1979.

Rutledge, David. ? Dickinson? s- I Know That He Exists? The Explicator winter 1994: 83- 84.