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Emily DickinsonA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Emily Dickinson’s poem opens with a “great pain” (Line 1) that alienates the person from themselves, and the separation between the person and their trauma manifests in the absence of a specific person. There’s a speaker, but they don’t identify themselves. There’s no “I” in the poem. There’s also no “you” or personal pronouns. The lack of a discrete emissary and addressee reinforces the claim that intense suffering produces disassociation. A person who’s deeply suffering—in their “Hour of Lead” (Line 10)—is not a whole, intact person but an amalgamation of other things and figures. They become “Nerves” (Line 2), a “Heart” (Line 3), a “mechanical” toy (Line 5), a “Wooden” puppet (Line 6), or “stone” (Line 9). Pain breaks a person into parts, and the fragments reassemble into something else—something other than what they were before the pain began.
While the speaker and the audience don’t have a palpable place in the poem, there are two humans—or human-like—figures, Jesus Christ and the people suffering from hypothermia. Christ advances the theme of alienation. The person in pain compares their suffering to Christ, but they’re presumably not Christ—the son of God. More so, Christ represents alienation, as His identity is the subject of debate, with people making the complex claim that Christ was an incarnation of a human but truly a god.
By Emily Dickinson
A Bird, came down the Walk
A Bird, came down the Walk
Emily Dickinson
A Clock stopped—
A Clock stopped—
Emily Dickinson
A narrow Fellow in the Grass (1096)
A narrow Fellow in the Grass (1096)
Emily Dickinson
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Emily Dickinson
"Faith" is a fine invention
"Faith" is a fine invention
Emily Dickinson
Fame Is a Fickle Food (1702)
Fame Is a Fickle Food (1702)
Emily Dickinson
Hope is a strange invention
Hope is a strange invention
Emily Dickinson
"Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers
"Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers
Emily Dickinson
I Can Wade Grief
I Can Wade Grief
Emily Dickinson
I Felt a Cleaving in my Mind
I Felt a Cleaving in my Mind
Emily Dickinson
I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain
I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain
Emily Dickinson
If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking
If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking
Emily Dickinson
If I should die
If I should die
Emily Dickinson
If you were coming in the fall
If you were coming in the fall
Emily Dickinson
I heard a Fly buzz — when I died
I heard a Fly buzz — when I died
Emily Dickinson
I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
Emily Dickinson
Much Madness is divinest Sense—
Much Madness is divinest Sense—
Emily Dickinson
Success Is Counted Sweetest
Success Is Counted Sweetest
Emily Dickinson
Tell all the truth but tell it slant
Tell all the truth but tell it slant
Emily Dickinson
The Only News I Know
The Only News I Know
Emily Dickinson