Dickinson non-priority what/why Flashcards
BECAUSE
what:
(gazing grain/setting sun/ immorality)
why #1:
(were toward eternity)
why #2:
What: In passage __ the conceit if death’s carriage ride seems to promise a Christian afterlife but the poem belies something darker
Why: Thus Dickinson arguably presents death being merely a peaceful transition bw an arduous quotidian and the rich consolations of the afterlife, revealing a confidence in resurrection that we see elsewhere in her opus
Why: As ever, Dickinson’s final view on death is withheld in favour of allowing the self to experience a range of reactions, be they sentimental or macabre, to death’s steadfast unknowability and life’s ephermerality
SOMETHING QUIETER
what:
why:
What: In passage ___ Dickinson’s speaker contemplates a death within the context of a ritualised Puritan wake, revealing once more her reservations with Ars Moriendi.
Why: Therefore, Dickinson evokes but then deliberately undercuts a ritualized wake scene to criticise contemporary religious efforts to evade death by drawing reader’s attention to death’s divine inscrutability.
FUNERAL
what:
(dropped down and down)
why #1:
(then - )
why #2:
what: In passage ___ the conceit of a funeral in the speaker’s brain comes to represent psychological anguish, with Dickinson presenting one of her most confronting poems on despair.
why: As in Blank and Slant, Dickinson renders the experience of psychological suffering to be annihilating and excruciating.
why: Thus, through the portrayal of surviving horrendous anguish, Dickinson gives both agonisingly visceral voice to mental suffering but also the hope of revelation through endurance.
HOPE
what:
(never stops - at all -)
why #1:
(it asked a crumb - of me)
why #2:
what: Passage __ is a poem of definition in which the speaker casts new light on the necessity and resistance of hope in times of despair.
why: Thus, although aspects of Dickinson’s opus such as Blank, Funeral and Slant are preoccupied with misery, she evolves the glimmer of revelation within them to suggest hope is a reliable and ever-present antidote.
why: Ultimately, this simile poem celebrates the “little” voice of hope is always within us no matter how hidden its shape or strained its song, as it is the most inspiring in the toughest moments of despair.
LOADED GUN
What:
(Master / eider duck)
Why #1:
(Without power to die)
Why #2:
What: the speaker finds questionable solace in a strange and unequal relationship reflecting Dickinson’s criticism of patriarchal power
Why: thus, loaded gun exposes Dickinson’s criticism of a patriarchal world - also seen in the insidious Frost - which casts women as passive unless they can imitate a male experience of find a false agency in subservience
Why: overall, Dickinson characterises female identity as a site of dormant and unrealised potential, exposing the meagreness of pursuing self-actualisation through subservience and, thus exhorting female readers to resist rather than acquiesce to their oppression.
SADDEST NOISE
What:
(magical frontier / summer hesitates / heavenly near)
Why #1:
(sirens throats sing no more)
Why#2:
What: nature is not a site of romantic refuge, but rather a sphere which triggers the speaker’s and possible Dickinson’s - struggle to accept human mortality as part of God’s creation
Why: Thus, rather than spring triggering a conventional, full throated riverdi, its sweetness reminds the speaker of life’s transcience and death’s inevitability; as in Slant and Frost, D clearly discerns something hostile in a God who creates beauty in N only for it to die
Why: Tf, D portrayal of death and beauty in N sees her once more avoid a cultish worship of earth, while painful she acknowledges unflinchingly that both sadness and sweetness are germane to human experience.
NARROW FELLOW
What:
(zero at the bone)
Why:
What: one of the few poems published in Dickinson’s lifetime, an adult speaker recounts a frightening boyhood encounter within nature
Why: Ultimately, D’s speaker takes a journey into N - a quintessentially American trope - only to discover inherent malevolence, disturbing Emersonian readers that N is a retreat in which we realised our highest and noblest selves