Blank

Question 1

Contour 1

Answer 1

Throughout most of this brief poem, Dickinson creates the conceit of a speaker groping through a labyrinth of ‘blanks’ to give voice to an experience of despair. This despair, Dickinson argues, is characterised by entrapment (the whole idea of being lost in a maze), confusion (‘threadless way’, ‘indefinite disclosed’), heaviness (‘push mechanic feet’), a kind of nameless dread (there is no monster in the labyrinth only a sense of amorphous ‘blankness’ torments the speaker) and fatalism (in the despair they imagine that all options are equivalent). In this way Dickinson gives voice to an experience of despair that is isolating, annihilating and distinctly protomodern.

Question 2

Turn

Answer 2

While the final line can be read pessimistically – as advocating ‘blindness’ to sorrow and emotional disengagement – it can also be read as uplifting. Dickinson may suggest that the only way to get through despair – to find a ‘lighter’ pathway out of the darkness – is to rely on intuition (to ‘grope’ rather than see) even if these intuitions bring pain. As such she reaffirms romantic faith in the imagination and intuition.

Question 3

C1
From Blank to Blank —
A Threadless Way

Answer 3

> Allusion + ‘blanks’ = conceit
-Theseus’ labyrinth but a maze of ‘blanks’ -> conceit labyrinth rep meaninglessness of speaker’s psych. state -> accen. by rep ‘blank’ + severing tetrameter line harnesses empty space at end of line to imply emptiness
Repetition + split tetrameter line
-‘threadless’ implies Sisyphean meandering / Slant rhymes defer acoustic expectation: sense of ends nearly arrived at but never realized.
Slant rhyme
-t/f speaker = alienated (protomodern)

Question 4

C1
I pushed Mechanic feet —

Answer 4

> Metaphor
-Metaphor = despairing mental state -> moving mechanically through life/going through motions in detached fashion
Verb connotations
-Verb ‘pushed’ = heaviness often seen poems re. despair (‘heft’ in Slant + ‘boots of lead’ in Funeral
-sense of ‘pushing’ own feet = detachment from own body/experience

Question 5

C1
To stop - or perish - or advance -
Alike indifferent -

Answer 5

> Dashes
-dashes rep speaker’s halting steps as they consider options (to stop, or to die, or to keep going) but polysyndeton + parallelism -> numbing equivalence of each option (fatalism)
Parallelism
-By end S1 speaker appears to suffer from a form of despair rooted in a feeling of meaninglessness which engenders a fatalistic attitude towards their existence

Question 6

C2
If end I gained
It ends beyond

Answer 6

> Allusion
-L6+7 refer back allus. labyrinth: unlike Theseus, who escapes, speaker reaches ‘end’ points, only for these 2 be deferred ‘beyond’ -> sense inescapable recursion w/in own psych. suffering.
Plosive /d/ consonance
-Cons. plosive /d/ à sense entrapment

Question 7

C2
Indefinite disclosed

Answer 7

> Plosive /d/ consonance
-‘disclosed’: /d/ appears in initial and terminal position: again, entrapment
Paradox
-paradox: ‘indefinite’ = vague, while ‘disclosed’= something made clear ∴ only thing ‘clear’ to speaker = lack of clarity itself

Question 8

C2
I shut my eyes — and groped as well

‘Twas lighter — to be Blind —

Answer 8

> Paradox
- In despair, sp. closes eyes, as if ‘blindness’ = less burdensome (‘lighter’) than active contemplation of their own suffering + meaninglessness in scheme of universe.
TURN
-HW, final couplet also contains trn typical of ED’s poems about despair / speaker seems to suggest that going by ‘feel’ rather than ‘sight’ may threat a path towards something ‘lighter’, or more illuminated.

Question 9

WHY

Answer 9

Thus, while Dickinson utilizes “Blank” to give a voice to a debilitating despair, she may also use it as an occasion to reaffirm, her romantic faith in the power of the imagination to endow clarify and even hope in times of despair.