as imperceptibly as greif - emily dickinson

Question 1

“as imperceptibly as greif, the summer lapsed away.”

Answer 1

her grief is coming to an end.

• simile shows the greif is like a cycle of process, it is coming to an end.
• verb “lapsed” show this change is very gradually, it is really not that noticeable.

Question 2

“a quietness distilled as twilight long begun”

“nature spending with herself.”

Answer 2

enjoying the time to herself.

• verb “distilled” shows a moment of reflection.
• light imagery “twilight” shows how the melancholy is taking over the light.
• Light imagery perhaps shows that grief ending, she doesn’t want to betray her friends.

Question 3

“morning foreign shone, a courteous, yet harrowing grace.”

Answer 3

feels unsettled with moving on from grief.

• adjective “foreign” shows the feeling of strange to feel happy again.
• adjective “harrowing” shows the pain to live without the feeling of grief.

Question 4

“without a wing or service of a keel.”

Answer 4

the balanced she has is gone.

• objects to balance are all gone now, she can’t navigate, she feels lost, she needs grief to function.

Question 5

“our summer made her light escape into the beautiful.”

Answer 5

time is a great healer.

• light imagery “light” shows that the grief she has is leaving, showing signs of hope.

Question 6

CONTEXT

Answer 6

• there is only one fullstop in the poem, signify the grief has ended.
• uses nature in her poem
• write about what she can observe.
• experienced many life events, one of her best friend died by a bomb.
• had a lifelong fascination with dying, death, illness - death is like acting like a person waiting for her to join.
• fearful of leaving her house.
• spend even her final years of her life in the mansion.
• never married or have children, reclusive.
• finds death as a new beginning rather than an end.
• fell in love with the man who treated her mother; her mother died so the men never came back; became depressed.