Emily Dickinson Influences

1070 Words5 Pages
Emily Dickinson was one of the most notable poets in the mid 1800’s. Dickinson was greatly influenced by her personal experiences as well as her surroundings. During her lifetime, she went through the Civil War. Dickinson developed her own unique style of writing poetry with meanings found in between the lines of her work. Emily Dickinson is an important American figure in early American literature because she raised the bar on the quality of poetry along with pioneering extraordinary writing techniques that connected her words to her relations with other people, nature, and abstract ideas, especially life and death. Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts on December 10, 1830. Her parents were Edward and Emily Norcross Dickinson.…show more content…
She began writing poetry in her teenage years. At the time she was in Amherst Academy, discovered the poetry of William Wordsworth. Wordsworth greatly impacted the style she has chosen to evolve. Dickinson had to take care of her ill mother for a big part of her childhood (Dommermuth-Costa). For most of her life, she was physically and mentally isolated from her friends and family. She rarely left the boundaries of her home and because of this, she was very adept to mastering her craft. This solitariness shaped the darker style of literature Dickinson is distinguished for. In the poem, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” the narrator suffers a traumatic experience which leads them to a state of vulnerability and helplessness. Via the metaphorical use of a funeral to project the poem’s underlying meaning, the theme of death is accentuated by the use of various literary elements, notably by the use of symbolism, structure, and imagery. The archetypes of life and death brought upon by the diction of the poem emphasize its main theme of reality and…show more content…
The extended metaphor of a funeral conceals its central theme. Numerous lines in this poem epitomize the philosophical concept of multiple realities. The poem first introduces the mourners treading on the narrator (3-4), then the service begins. The mourners bring in a coffin, or “Box,” which is ready for the burial. “And then I heard them lift a Box / And creak across my Soul” (9-10). The poem gradually becomes more religious and spiritual in nature. The “Soul” mentioned in line 10 must be the ground where the funeral service is taking place. The ground is also made out of wood, since the mourners who are carrying the coffin across it make the surface under them creak, much like old, worn-out wood. “With those same Boots of Lead, again, / Then Space--began to toll,” (11-12). The mourners who carried the coffin to the burial site were wearing lead boots, which signifies the narrator’s amassed burden and anxiety of the whole situation. The funeral is a deja vu incident because the narrator recalled the lead boots the mourners wore while they carried the casket. “Space” is the embodiment of a church bell as it is rung, much like a funeral bell tolling during a funeral service. “And then a Plank of Reason, broke, / And I dropped down, and down -” (17-18). The narrator goes back to the “Soul” and compares it to reason. From
Open Document