to know Flashcards
poetic form- heroic quatrains and anaphoric enquiry
establishes the exceptionally traditional elegy ( painful death leads to blissful resurrection) the tone is mournful questioning= speakers mourning intimate friend or lover, most likely a civil war soldier wishing to know if it was a dignified death.
“To know just how He suffered- would be dear’
‘he’ allows her to commenerate all the war dead and use the poem as an occasion to comment on the expenential reality of dying in war. VVS- did he achieve a ‘good puritan death’
‘to know if any human eyes were near ‘ ‘wavering gaze’ and ‘settled broad on paradise.’
synecdoche of ‘eyes’ represents the speakers urgent wish to know if in accordance with ‘good death’ the dying individual was attended by friends, loved ones or comrades ‘wavering; evokes the extreme vulnerability of dying man throes contrasted with ‘settled’ on ‘paradise; = soul soon to be granted redemption + restfulness in heaven.
‘patient-part content’
adjectives express the speakers wish to know if the soldier accepted death calmly
‘did the sunshine face his way’
simple syntax and diction = speakers wish soldier received sample comforts - predictable meter reflects the conventional elegy afterlife and reveals the speaker keenly engaged with Good puritan death.
‘His furthest mind-Of home0 or God-“ and ‘what the distant say’
breakdown of the heroic quatrain + additional lime and parallelism + caesura and dash. metrical shift= Dickinson problematising the assumption heaven is only source of consolation/ multiple foreshortened lines may replicate imperfect rhythms mortality and speakers grief
loss of ‘home’ elevated to same status as contemplation if heaven. soldier contemplates legacy in the ,mortal world not just resurrect.
’ Just his sigh- accented- had been legible- to me- ‘
Synaesthesia imply privileged relationship between the soldier and speaker because only the speaker has the unique sensory capacity to discern the soldiers final wish
‘afraid- or tranquil’
adjectives= speaker is sill interested in a Puritan good death (wishes soul to be ‘tranquil’)
‘How conscious consciousness could grow’
Near identical repetition could be the dying man has revelation of god before death and/or awareness if death intensifies out humanity (our ultimate vulnerability makes life’s ephemeral relationship precious)
‘Till love that was- and love too best be’
past tense and hyperbolic language stresses twin loves one of the mortal wold that must be left behind and the other perfection of God’s redemption.
