Preview

How Does Emily Dickinson Use Allegory

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1910 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
How Does Emily Dickinson Use Allegory
Boyadjis 1
Lucy Boyadjis
English 1H
Ms. McGrover
5 November 2014 I Died for Beauty Death is a topic that is constantly frowned upon. Death scares people as it marks the end of one’s life on this Earth. But, there are people who believe there is a reason for death and that souls do not die along with the rest of a person. Many probably call this idea crazy or insane. But there are some other people, who in the midst of all darkness might simply call it hope. Famous poet, Emily Dickinson is one of those people. The poem “I Died for Beauty” by Emily Dickinson uses strong metaphors, complex imagery, and allegory to create a theme of death and soul immortality. Emily Dickinson frequently uses metaphors in her poetry to enhance the text. She
…show more content…
Allegory is a common aspect to many poems and other literary genres but it can also be much more difficult to identify. In this piece, Emily Dickinson uses allegory to portray the true meaning of sacrifice and embracing death. An example of this in the poem is the line “We brethren are” (Dickinson Line 8). Despite its briefness and lack of explanation, this line is powerful because the author uses allegory to show the relationship between truth and beauty.
Although the word brethren usually implies family relations, in this case it is used to represent the bond between two strangers who both died out of desire. Each character was
…show more content…
Emily Dickinson uses allegory to portray this and allows the reader to think for themselves. This is also evident in another part of the poem. “And so, as kinsmen met a night” (Dickinson Line 9). This is one of the many excerpts from Emily

Boyadjis 3 Dickinson’s work that displays the use of allegory and it’s importance. Kinsmen is technically another word for relative. Like the word brethren, the purpose of this word in the poem is to symbolize the relationship between beauty and truth.
“I Died for Beauty” by Emily Dickinson teaches the idea of one’s soul being eternally alive. Most everyone believes that everything comes to an end, and that when your body dies, your soul and your heart die with it. But Emily Dickinson is one of the few that believe otherwise. Dickinson expresses her view on embracing and learning about death through the use of literary devices in her work. “ … this poem supplies further evidence that the corruption of the flesh held little terror for her” (Huff). Her poetry speaks to people by inspiring them to believe in the immortality of the soul and that despite the death and decay of all things, the value of one’s true self can conquer all.

Boyadjis

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    I can remember how when I was young I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind−and that of the minds of the ones who suffer the bereavement. The nihilists say it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town (42).…

    • 408 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the beginning of the stanza death arrives to pick up the speaker. She says “Because I could not stop for Death- He kindly waited for me,” (1-2) this shows that Dickinson represents death as a generous person. He’s also described as being patient, when in reality death can’t stop to wait for someone. We then see that death and the speaker aren’t the only ones going along this ride but so is “immortality” (4). “We slowly drove- he knew no haste” (5). By saying this she shows us that he has patience and that death isn’t in a hurry to get to their…

    • 796 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Emily Dickinson references ideas common in Deist beliefs in her poem 1672. Although there are different Deist philosophies, one of the most consistent viewpoints is that our earth was created by a god who is like a blind watchmaker meaning that the Earth 's creator completed it without knowledge, but in a perfect order. Evidence of Dickinson 's belief can be acknowledged by Thomas Paine who wrote in Life and Writings of Thomas Paine, "This harmony in the works of God is so obvious, that the farmer of the field, though he cannot calculate eclipses, is as sensible of it as the philosophical astronomer. He sees the God of order in every part of the visible universe." Paine 's statement corresponds with Dickinson observation that the Earth is a…

    • 961 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Emily Dickinson Imagery

    • 681 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In Emily Dickinson’s poem “I am afraid to own a Body” the speaker primarily uses sound to posit the overall theme of the poem. More specifically, she uses incoherent and disjointed repetition (notably alliteration and assonance) and slant rhymes that scatter the poem but do not fall into any pattern to suggest her own inability to conform to expected or desired patterns of being a human. The background imagery of inheritance to which the poem alludes complements these expected patterns.…

    • 681 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Dickinson’s poem “510: It was not Death, for I stood up,” explores the uncertainties of Death. The speaker attempts to define or understand her own condition to unwrap the cause of her suffering. The use of extended metaphor is utilized as the speaker uses the term “death” and that her life and state of mind, to her, resembles nothing other than death itself. The dominant effect would be the feeling of despair as the speaker represents this by saying “As if my life were shaven, / and fitted to a frame,” or in other words indicating that the speaker’s life has been shaven down solely to despair and that the “frame fitted” would only be feelings of terror. Dickinson frames her poem into 6 quatrains each with the alternations of 8 and 6 syllables per line. The irregular capitalization in the poem is shown with the use of “it” and other terms relating to death, light, dark, cold and somewhat chaotic tragedy.…

    • 563 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Emily Dickinson’s main purpose in poem 355 is to describe an indefinable depression. She creates a melancholy persona to depict the chaos and despair she feels because of her condition. Her poem is structured around her uncertainty towards her mental state. Dickinson, in the first two stanzas, eliminates possibilities to what she may be feeling. She analyzes that “it was not death”, “it was not night”, “it was not frost”, “nor fire”. The poem appeals to the human sense of touch, as Dickinson compares tangible sensations that the body normally experiences to her tumultuous emotions. In the third stanza, Dickinson synthesizes all of the possibilities she eradicated in the previous two stanzas, ominously stating that her condition “tasted like them all”. The narrator is unable to distinguish her feelings from one another, leading the reader to conclude that she is in a chaotic state of mind. She compares her condition to a funeral, both of which evoke death. In the fourth stanza, Dickinson continues to explore her persona’s dark psyche. The narrator experiences terror and despair to the point where she “could not breathe.” Her only “key” to escape this punishment is to be able to understand what she is feeling and why…

    • 518 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Emily Dickinson might be called an artisan, since most of her poems have fewer than thirty lines, yet she deals with the most deep topics in poetry: death, love, and humanity’s relations to God and nature. Her poetry not only impresses by its on going freshness but also the animation. Her use of language and approachness of her subjects in unique ways, might attribute to why “Hope is the thing with feathers” is one of her most famous works.…

    • 1259 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Emily Dickinson Ambiguity

    • 423 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Lines four and five, “Tis the Majority In this, as All, prevail,” Dickinson offers a conceivable explanation to the reader. However, the reader is still left to wonder about the word “All”. Does Dickinson mean all is madness or all has sense? Once again it also makes the reader wonder what madness is referencing.…

    • 423 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The first two lines are “There is no Frigate like a Book and “To take us Lands away”. Books cannot physically “take us” anywhere, but Dickinson skillfully using a metaphor, relates a book to a “frigate” to show us we can go anywhere using our imaginations.…

    • 415 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Emily Dickinson Beliefs

    • 279 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Emily Elizabeth Dickinson is one of the most influential poets and has unique characteristics that make her very different than any other poet. What causes Dickinson to be so unique is the words she writes and how she expresses her thoughts with them. Since a very young age, Emily Dickinson has always been captivated with religion and death. It aided that her room had a view of a cemetery and that her father was extremely religious. Her philosophies covered the Christian faith and how she felt about the church in her poem, “Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church;” also, “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain,” gave different perspectives on how she felt about funerals and death. She had only a few inspirations that helped her in her writing and influenced…

    • 279 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    This shows Dickinson's anger toward God. She does not want to have to die to…

    • 951 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Why I Died For Beauty

    • 607 Words
    • 3 Pages

    When Dickinson writes; “He questioned softly "Why I failed"?” we can tell that the man asked the speaker why she died, she replied “"For Beauty..."” the reader then finds out that the man claims to have died for trust and he states that trust and beauty are the same thing, and in turn stating the they are both “Brethren”. Dickinson’s usage of term “Brethren” makes the reader suggest that their relationship is much stronger (Apran) than just an acquaintance and that they are both apart of or a member of this one this, which is death.…

    • 607 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The poem is structured as a dialogue alongside a combination of personification and apostrophe. Used together, these literary devices give “life” and immediacy to the language of the poem as seen in Dickinson’s first poem. The reader is provoked to think of abstract concepts of ‘Death’ and ‘the Spirit’ as thinking, feeling, and speaking like human beings. The use of personification is found in the second and third lines: “’Dissolve” says Death – The Spirit “Sir / I have another Trust” –“. ‘Death’ and ‘the Spirit’ are also personified physically, as found in line two of stanza two: “The Spirit turns away”. The combination of these poetic devices creates a subtle but creative ironic tone. Since the poem depicts a dialogue between nonhuman entities that are in disagreement about the immorality of ‘the Spirit’, personifying them gives them the qualities of life that suggests that the soul is immortal. The last two lines of the second stanza are symbolic and open to interpretation. By leaving the most difficult concepts of the poem until the end is…

    • 831 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Why Do I Love

    • 544 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In this poem Dickinson uses a good variety of diction and figurative language that supersedes poets of her time. In all of her stanzas she uses personification such as, “The Lightning-never asked an Eye Wherefore it Shut,” (Aries 1) is one example of attributing human characteristics to non-human entities. Other examples of Dickinson’s figurative language used within her poem are her use of similes. In her first stanza she writes, “The Wind does not require the Grass To answer-Wherefore when He pass She cannot keep Her place,” (Aries 1), which provides a perfect example of comparing the inability to remain still and reserve during physical and emotional pressure metaphorically. By Dickinson writing in this manner, she is able to keep the reader engulfed through imagery provided by her poetic language.…

    • 544 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Success Is Counted Sweetest Success Is Counted Sweetest is a well-known poem written by Emily Dickinson in 1859. It is obviously seen that the message of the poem is that people who do not succeed are those who truly understand success for what it is (Cummings, 2013). In other words, deprivation can lead to greater understanding and appreciation of what people lack. This paper is composed of three points including how the unity of the paradoxical idea of the poem is presented, how the poem can be viewed historically and biographically in feminist aspects, and how the central idea of the poem is responded.…

    • 872 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays