Well, I knew that what I wrote was a first draft, and these types of essays are so hard to write. But I had such a hard time NOT interpret the poems, and just when I think I reached the non-analytical point... turns out, I interpreted. Ha ha.
I just have this urge to interpret every word of even the smallest or largest pieces of work and so writing this paper was hard! I took a bunch of notes and was ready to write the paper yet I sat at the computer with an empty page thinking of how to start for nearly 1.5hrs. and then I wrote a paper but had to delete almost the whole thing, because I interpreted Emily Dickinson's work. UGH! I am just so much better at interpreting rather than just pure analyzing with no meaning.
I just have this urge to interpret every word of even the smallest or largest pieces of work and so writing this paper was hard! I took a bunch of notes and was ready to write the paper yet I sat at the computer with an empty page thinking of how to start for nearly 1.5hrs. and then I wrote a paper but had to delete almost the whole thing, because I interpreted Emily Dickinson's work. UGH! I am just so much better at interpreting rather than just pure analyzing with no meaning.
But back to Emily Dickinson, she is so complicated and, well, hard to predict. It seems as though she can be all over the place in her work. Still I suppose there is a type of logic to her style and topics. Emily Dickinson's poetry examines various forms of death, characterizing her work as one that is melancholic,dreary, and abstract. Dickinson talks not only about death but also of time and sometimes love, but her apparently favorite topic seems to be death.
In just these for lines she has already mentioned in some form or another, death and time. But not only did she mention death, but she personifies it. This is a common occurrence in Dickinson's work. She likes not only to personify death and time... but she tends associate them with the male sex. I am not sure if that comes from past associations, as since the "creation" God and Satin have been thought of as male, and since death can be argued to be related he is therefore also male. Or if it is from Dickinson's own idea's about death.
This I didn't think of even after sitting at the computer for hours on end. Yet it would have been good... except the whole theory why she uses the pronouns "He" instead of "She". I honestly can't go more than one sentence without interpreting something, and then I spend the majority of the time deleting instead of writing.
Hopefully revisions will go better since I already have a rough draft and good skeleton to work off of. Good luck to the rest of you, don't run into the same problems I did!
PS
I just want a say I had so much trouble publishing the post!!!!! ugh! It took like 30 min!
"Because I could not stop for Death-
He kindly stopped for me-
The Carriage held but just Ourselves-
And Immortality" (Because I could not stop, Lines 1-4)
In just these for lines she has already mentioned in some form or another, death and time. But not only did she mention death, but she personifies it. This is a common occurrence in Dickinson's work. She likes not only to personify death and time... but she tends associate them with the male sex. I am not sure if that comes from past associations, as since the "creation" God and Satin have been thought of as male, and since death can be argued to be related he is therefore also male. Or if it is from Dickinson's own idea's about death.
This I didn't think of even after sitting at the computer for hours on end. Yet it would have been good... except the whole theory why she uses the pronouns "He" instead of "She". I honestly can't go more than one sentence without interpreting something, and then I spend the majority of the time deleting instead of writing.
Hopefully revisions will go better since I already have a rough draft and good skeleton to work off of. Good luck to the rest of you, don't run into the same problems I did!
PS
I just want a say I had so much trouble publishing the post!!!!! ugh! It took like 30 min!
4 comments:
The use of the pronoun "he" does not necessarily have to reflect Dickinson's personal views, as you have already noted.. although it's considerably less intriguing if contemporary thought classified Death as male instead of Dickinson herself.
Another avenue of thought to consider is to correlate her description of heaven, or maybe it is better generalized to her thoughts on the afterlife, which seem(s) distinctly original, with her personification of Death. The obvious problem here though is once again that it is always possible she drew her inspiration from both contemporary thought and personal experience, in which case there may never be a satisfactory answer.
Yay! It's really nice to know that I'm not the only one who takes a long time on writing (see "Writing These Essays...)
But celebration aside, I know what you mean when you have the "urge to interpret every word" as we've been trained to do so throughout high school and other previous coursework. Perhaps the "Novice as Expert" essay had it right, that we're better off forgetting what we knew about writing, and start from scratch. Or maybe that's just for this particular essay..
I know exactly how you feel about the whole interpretation deal in writing the essay. The long painstaking nights of just figuring out how to start the essay/encyclopedia article and then wondering where to go from there. It is, though, good practice in catching more to the details and structure of the poems rather than the hidden meaning. In the world of sarcasm, figurative language, and arts, it is no surprise that our minds are inclined to find the meaning behind the text, especially in poetry. However, I will say this: the expository writing is certainly something I may be needing in the future.
The interpretation of "He" on the second line of the poem refers to death, but the choice between "he" and "she" may be a conflict. It may just happens that "he" is the default for ungendered subjects or it could also be that she associates Death with the male-dominating, women-binding society Dickinson lived in.
'he' isn't always the default for ungendered objects, take a car or a boat for example they are always called a 'she'.
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