An Overview of the Themes in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry
Poem ‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers There’s a certain Slant of light I felt a Funeral, in my Brain A Bird came down the Walk I heard a Fly buzz – when I died The Soul has Bandaged moments I could bring You Jewels – had I a mind to A narrow Fellow in the Grass I taste a liquor never brewed After great pain, a formal feeling comes Main Theme(s)
„„Hope „„Despair
„„Despair „„Religion
„„Despair „„Death
„„Nature
„„Death „„Despair
„„Depression „„Happiness „„Vulnerability
„„Love „„Vulnerability „„Nature
„„Nature „„Evil
„„Nature „„Happiness
„„Pain „„Depression
Emily Dickinson explores many themes in her poetry, but is particularly renowned for her poems exploring death and despair. Dickinson explores both of these difficult themes in raw and startling detail. However, Dickinson also explores nature, hope and happiness in her poems, and so she is very much a poet of contradictions. Her nature poems provide a welcome contrast to her darker material and she explores this theme in a thoroughly innovative and original way, just as she does her other themes.
DEATH
Emily Dickinson is often portrayed as having been obsessed with death. Although this was not the case, there are certainly many poems in which she does explore this theme in unflinching detail. Dickinson was surrounded by death from an early age. Nineteenth- century mortality rates were far higher than ours are today, and she lost many friends and family members over the years. She lived very close to the town cemetery during the years her family spent on North Pleasant Street. Part of her reputation for having an unhealthy fixation on death rests on the fact that she left such specific instructions
