Actually changed TS + VVS Flashcards
Fly
In Fly, Dickinson again scrutinises the Puritan Cult of Death through the comic intrusion of a banal fly into the speaker’s solemn deathbed vigil scene.
Thus, while Dickinson retains hope for a Christian afterlife, the poem’s bathetic conclusion ultimately speaks to the irony of Ars Moriendi, which attempts to create a divine spectacle of an occasion so persistently pedestrian and impersonal, at least from an observer’s perspective.
Opposite House
In Opposite House, the ubiquity of death in Civil War America causes the domestic and gothic to collide when a male speaker reports on a neighbourhood death.
Thus, Dickinson opposes creating a spectacle of death as this promises a false sense of control over its tenacious mystery and fascinating Gothicism.
To Know
To Know is an elegiac poem in which a female speaker, possibly a lover, launches an anaphoric inquiry, seeking “to know” the true nature of a soldier’s dying moments.
Therefore, while Dickinson recognises the benefit of religious tenets in providing comfort in life’s most mournful moments, she also accepts life is tragically ephemeral and thus the loss of human connections is an event worth grieving.
Frost
In Frost, the speaker, who uses inclusive pronouns to represent all of humanity, attempts to evade death before bitterly accepting its inevitability.
Thus, while Dickinson appears sceptical of Emersion tropes about death due to their its insensitivity to the unique tragedy of mortal life, in that we are born only to perish, she remains characteristically ambivalent about death and despair, accepting only that they are irrevocable and sacred parts of human experience.
Blank
In Passage_, Dickinson’s speaker attempts to navigate their way out of the the depths of mental despair, presented through the conceit of a Thesian maze, to discover the power of intuition and imagination.
Thus, just as Funeral, while Dickinson’s deliberately ambiguous final message is indicative of her broader resistance to accepting comforting cliches, it possibly also celebrates the power of imagination to pave a path towards hope.
Slant
For the speaker in Passage ___, a fading light is cause for despair over their own mortality and the apathy of nature and the divine to their suffering.
Therefore, while Dickinson’s visceral evocation of the experience of despair may provide an opportunity for solidarity between all humankind who inevitably face this inner conflict, Slants’s speaker problematises religious and transcental tendencies to sentimentalise nature in a naive attempt to conceal the possibility of death being an eternal darkness, rather than a sublime light.
Blazing
In Passage _, Dickinson presents an uncharacteristically optimistic review of nature through the conceit of a jester’s captivating performance as the sun journeys across the sky.
Thus, the poem’s briefness may serve as an invigorating word of encouragement from Dickinson, inspiring readers to engage intensely in the present moment and the power of the natural world. Yet, Blazing is undeniably at odds with Dickinson’s oftentime resentful attitude towards nature - as is the case for the speakers of Slant and Saddest Noise -, and so the poem’s compactness is perhaps a subtle acknowledgement of the tragic transcience of Romantic tenets’ ability to elide death’s emotional burden.
Two Butterflies
In Passage _, Dickinson’s vate-like poet-speaker exercises their negative capability with the flight of two butterflies forming a conceit for their imagined transcendence beyond the barriers of human perception.
Thus, through her complex tonality, Dickinson exposes the transience of moments of sublime clarity and ultimately presents a characteristically ambivalent assessment of religion, nature, and poetry itself
