Preview

"The Last Night That She Lived" by Emily Dickinson

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
411 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
"The Last Night That She Lived" by Emily Dickinson
Almost every poem has an attitude that explains us the poem to give us a better understanding. The use of language and the style of the poem also lead us to being comfortable with the text. In this poem, the title "The Last Night that She Lived" already hints us about the somber attitude ahead.

As we start off with the poem, the first stanza gives it to us, that a death has occurred in a normally Common Night. The meaning of the two capitalized letters C in common and N in night tells us that a night which is usually common, something different has occurred. The C and the N gives emphasis to both words to make us notice the difference as it comes ahead.

In the next paragraph, there is a slight change of tone where the viewers of this scene are looking at the lady and remembering the littlest things that didn't mean much before. The work "Italicized" is used to emphasize that the smallest things that had happened before are finally being notices as something important.

The fifth paragraph becomes restless. Everyone knows that she can pass any time. "Too jostled were Our Souls to Speak." In this sentence, jostled is used to explain how shaken up everyone is that they can't even say anything to the dying woman.

A simile is shown in the second to the last stanza. "Then lightly as a Reed Bent to the Water..." Here she's being compared to a Reed in a graceful manner. Without struggling much, accepting her fate, calmly, she'd dead.

The last paragraph gives us an oxymoron, "And then an awful leisure was belief to regulate." Leisure is usually a term used for something done in free time, something for fun, but in this poem it's given as an awful leisure. In this case, it seems as if this is a gathering of people, but not for fun, more like for mourning over the dead. The awful leisure can also mean as a gathering to accept or try to believe that the woman has really gone from these people's lives. The attitude of this oxymoron is more like awkwardly disoriented.

In

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Upon reading the poem, imagery can be found throughout the entire poem. For example, in the first two lines you can imagine a doll being put away like a dead child in a chest, you cannot bring a dead child back to life. This is the burial of her childhood only to keep her memories and carry them with her for the rest of her life. Also, the second to last line where she is “wound,” twisted, “like the guts of a clock,” referring to her stomach. She feels a sense of anxiety here. This is her final emotion to conclude the poem. She fears growing up because of the responsibilities she will have to take on, the shame she felt when her period started, will…

    • 524 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    One of the first figurative language, we can see are the breaks or pauses in the middle of the line known as caesura. The author use these caesuras to symbolically show the…

    • 407 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the last two stanzas’ it is revealed at last what has happened to her family. The reader can feel the pain and sorrow that the girl goes through and the sad disappointment at not…

    • 559 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    She is displayed as a bitter, hateful character who seeks revenge, shown with ‘not a day since then I haven’t wished him dead’ and ‘give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon’. This is almost contrasted with her loneliness and sexual frustration explored in the first stanza, with ‘some nights better, the lost body over me, my fluent tongue in it’s mouth in it’s ear then down till I suddenly bite awake.’…

    • 1243 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    "Night" by Elie Wiesel

    • 420 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Have you ever been separated from your family? What if living wasn’t guaranteed? The holocaust killed over eleven million people. The purpose of the holocaust was to eliminate the entire Jewish race. In Night, by Elie Wiesel, Elie and his family were separated. Elie was forced to take care of his father while his mother and sister were killed. The Jews’ freedom, identity, and sense of hope were taken from them to make the Jews feel less than human.…

    • 420 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    "Night" by Elie Wiesel

    • 1260 Words
    • 6 Pages

    There is a very thin line between the person who you were and the person that you are right now. As humans, we experience millions of events that can affect and change our perspective on aspects throughout the course of our lives. Similar to caterpillars, we cannot be innocent and childish forever. There is a time for everybody to transform into something beautiful, and everybody’s time is different. Change can be good or bad, but most importantly, change helps us grow and become the people we were meant to be. How are we supposed to mature and enjoy our lives if we cannot accept the differences that life presents? For many people, metamorphosing is difficult because sometimes it can be a challenge to let go of something that was always a part of ourselves, such as letting go of a teddy bear, or a blanket, but for other people, it can be almost instantaneous.…

    • 1260 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Dickinson’s poem “510: It was not Death, for I stood up,” explores the uncertainties of Death. The speaker attempts to define or understand her own condition to unwrap the cause of her suffering. The use of extended metaphor is utilized as the speaker uses the term “death” and that her life and state of mind, to her, resembles nothing other than death itself. The dominant effect would be the feeling of despair as the speaker represents this by saying “As if my life were shaven, / and fitted to a frame,” or in other words indicating that the speaker’s life has been shaven down solely to despair and that the “frame fitted” would only be feelings of terror. Dickinson frames her poem into 6 quatrains each with the alternations of 8 and 6 syllables per line. The irregular capitalization in the poem is shown with the use of “it” and other terms relating to death, light, dark, cold and somewhat chaotic tragedy.…

    • 563 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In this poem, the speaker speaks from the spiritual realm. As the narrator is speaking, the narrator talks about the day she died. The theme of this poem is death is inevitable yet peaceful.…

    • 210 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Famous writer Emily Dickinson is well known for expressing depression and love in her poems. Some people believe that this is because of a traumatic emotional experience she went through in her late twenties or early thirties. There are multiple ways and techniques she uses to show her feelings in her poems. In If you were coming in the Fall, Dickinson uses a variety of different techniques to show her feelings for a loved one known only as "you."…

    • 578 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “A Rose for Emily”, Emily should be able to do as she pleases, but her dependence on her father does not allow her to have freedom. Her father’s over-protection is obviously the root of all her monstrosities. Argue for or against this view.…

    • 738 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    What is an immigration ban? An immigration ban is an executive order that is being enforced by the US president, Donald Trump. This ban has been around for many years but has been very lenient and has allowed many illegal Muslims, Mexicans, and other nationalities into the country that have killed US citizens or have destroyed cities or jobs of the hard working Americans. “You now have a president who really takes seriously the tremendous threat of international terrorism and is prepared to take steps that are very tough-minded and that are going to inconvenience some people,” former Speaker Newt Gingrich said. I think that an immigration ban is one of the best things that Donald Trump could do for this country in order to make America great…

    • 129 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Emily Dickinson writes her poems using words that can be translated differently by nearly every reader. Though she presents obvious truth when reading the surface of her poems, she provides a creative, much deeper meaning behind the first impression if one dares to expand their minds outside of their normal thought range. “I know that He exists” is a substantial poem that twists the ideas and opinions of our views about God and the life we were created to live.…

    • 644 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Without hope what would we do? It gets us through our most difficult times, and gives us something to hold onto when there's nothing. Emily Dickinson's Hope is the thing with Feathers describes what hope does for us. The poem's theme is that hope is always there, and gets us though our toughest times, but never asks for anything in return.…

    • 295 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The poem discusses the funeral of a woman and how she is presented in her funeral as someone people would be more likely to romanticize than what she actually was, perhaps out of a misguided sign of respect. The other more hidden meaning behind the poem is the author's reaction to the women herself and how she is portrayed in almost a spiteful, angry way because of his anger over her wasting her life in gray dullness.…

    • 868 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Vengeance is forbidden. Vengeance should never be on anyone's mind. Vengeance is akin to a four letter word yet there are some who will admit that there is a certain allure, satisfaction, and fulfillment that comes with vengeance. A woman who “feeds” her vengeance would make her anger disappear, as Emily Dickinson once wrote in her poem “Mine Enemy is Growing Old”, “Anger as soon as fed is dead. ' T is starving makes it fat.”…

    • 1827 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays