LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 14:3 March 2014
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Thematic Study of Death in Emily Dickinson’s Selected Poems

Zahra Ahmadi and Zohreh Tayari
Arak Branch, Islamic Azad University, Iran

Abstract

The following essay offers a discussion of Emily Dickinson’s poems, I Like a Look of Agony (241), A Clock Stopped (287), and Death Sets a Thing Significant (360). Emily Dickinson’s poetry made her recognized as a deeply religious poet because what she represented in her poems were her own spiritual experiences. Among all the themes which Dickinson wrote about, death is the predominant one. A great body of her work has been written about death. In this essay, we analyze some of Dickinson’s poems in order to recognize how the views of death are embedded in every line of these poems.

Key terms: Death, The Images of Death.

Introduction

Emily Dickinson was one of the intellectuals of the nineteenth century. She was born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts and died in 1886 in her house. After her death, her sister, Lavinia, discovered her collection of 1800 poems and published them in 1890. Emily’s original and powerful mind as well as her mystic imagery made her an icon in the world of literature. Dickinson’s poetry was much like a rebellion against tradition. Her poems were different from any other models of her era. She kept herself in isolation from society and created a small mysterious world through her poems. She just had a little contact with other poets and writers of her age but she read a lot. Emily Dickinson’s poetry was influenced by the poems of Emerson and Hawthorne.

Poetry for Dickinson had special definition. She wrote to Thomas W Higginson that “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me I know that is poetry….” She wrote her poems without any limitations, and nothing could restrict her. The most frequent themes in her poems are the teaching of Jesus Christ, nature, love, God, Religious pain, identity, immortality, separation, the inner world of a person, and death. Her religious beliefs, rather her rejection of established religion, her deep love of God, and hope in the after-life, are persistent on spiritual values she had inculcated even as a young woman. The themes of her poems include immortality, eternity and infinity, resurrection, the question of life after death, and the death of her close friends; these are considered as the main elements which propelled her to concentrate much of her attention on death.

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Zahra Ahmadi
Zahra_ahmadi755@yahoo.com
Zohreh Tayari
zohrehtayari57@yahoo.com
Department of English Literature
Research and Science
Arak Branch, Islamic Azad University
Arak, Iran
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