Slant

Question 1

Contour 1

Answer 1

The first part of the PA basically suggests that the speaker is depressed by nature’s reminder of mortality. It also covers what the speaker suggests despair feels like and suggests Dickinson’s alienation from broader structures.

Question 2

C1
certain Slant of light
Winter Afternoons

Answer 2

> Connotations
-connot ‘slant’ = obscurity of vision (X clarity) immediately evokes speaker’s psych. Discomfort
Metaphorical setting
-setting ‘winter afternoons’ = the light may be slanted b/c it is retreating (day is dying) ∴ speaker senses death in nature

Question 3

C1
‘oppresses, like the Heft

Of Cathedral Tunes –’

Answer 3

> Ponderous diction
-speaker’s intuition of death in nature triggers despair which ‘oppresses’ with its ‘heft’ / light is not airy but heavy
Trochaic pulse
-ED accentuates weight of speaker’s misery by referring to ‘Cath. Tunes’ which should bring comfort but instead intensify tactile ‘heft’ sp’s despair also accen. by trochaic pulse (note sim. diction + trochaic pulse in Funeral – treading/treading)

Question 4

C1
‘internal difference’

‘Where the Meanings, are –’

‘No scar’

Answer 4

> Sharp /i/ assonance
Ungrammatical comma
-assonance evokes despair’s painful sharpness, cutting through and affecting us @core ‘where the
meanings, are’ / ungrammatical comma implies disturbance @ heart of identity
Imagery
-image of ‘no scar’ à evokes isolating invisibility + alienation caused by despair - protomodern.

Question 5

C2

Answer 5

The second part of the analysis essentially covers the idea that God is cruel for giving us – all of humanity – this despair and making us die too. However, Dickinson may also suggest that a common experience of vulnerability may be a basis for human connection.

Question 6

C2
‘Heavenly Hurt it gives us’ + ‘Imperial Affliction.’

Answer 6

> Oxymoron + diction of regality
Incl ‘us’
-God sends desp. Through nature to all humanity (‘us’) / oxy + dict evokes speaker’s ambiv. re powerful ‘imperial’ God thought to be ‘heavenly’ but who deliberately ‘hurts’ humankind from distance / speaker seems to lament cruelty of a God who creates humanity only to make it suffer + die

Question 7

C2
‘shadows - hold their breath - ’

Answer 7

> Personification
-shadows hold breath b/c as light fades towards its death, they too will die ∴ poem ends on note of death with which it began

Question 8

C2
‘we’ and ‘us’

Answer 8

> Incl lang
-h/w inclusive pronouns in poem remind readers human pain + mortality = shared fate, making ED’s poetry an occasion for human connection even in midst of suffering