Dickinson Essay, Research Paper

My Life Closed Twice Before Its CloseMy life closed twice before its close–It yet remains to seeIf Immortality unveilA third event to meSo huge, so hopeless to conceiveAs these that twice befell. Parting is all we know of heaven,And all we need of hell. A paradox is a statement which contains apparently opposing or incongrouselements which, when read together, turn out to make sense. The first lineis paradoxical in that there are separate meanings for the words “closed”and “close” — Dickinson tells of having suffered 2 great losses, somonumental as to be comparable to death. She wonders if another suchdevastating event awaits her in the future. Emily Dickinson #389 There s been a Death, in the Opposite House, As lately as Today — I know it, by the numb look Such Houses have alway — The Neighbors rustle in and out — The Doctor drives away — A Window opens like a Pod — Abrupt mechanically — Somebody flings a Mattress out — The Children hurry by — They wonder if it died on that — I used to when a Boy — The Minister goes stiffly in — As if the House were His — And he owned all the Mourners now — And little Boys besides — And then the Milliner and the Man Of the Appalling Trade — To take the measure of the House There ll be that Dark Parade — Of Tassels and of Coaches soon — It s easy as a Sign — The Intuition of the News — In just a Country Town –Wallace StevensThe Emperor of Ice-cream Call the roller of big cigars, The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds. Let the wenches dawdle in such dress As they are used to wear, and let the boys Bring flowers in last month s newspapers. Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. Take from the dresser of deal Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet On which she embroidered fantails once And spread it so as to cover her face. If her horny feet protrude, they come To show how cold she is, and dumb. Let the lamp affix its beam. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. It would be extreme understatement to say that death has long been a topicin literature; the topic has been central to human thought since thebeginning of human thought, and is no stranger to the pages of literature,both classic and modern. However, in twentieth century America, death hasbeen sanitized to a great degree. One way in which twentieth centuryAmericans have been shielded from death is the replacement of the wake athome with the funeral director and the funeral home. We have replacedfamilial cooperation and shared grieving with convenience. What seems tohave happened in light of these changes is that the event of death seems tohave become more one-dimensional in its emotion than it may once have been. What this long-winded introduction is attempting to lead toward is thenotion that the two poems chosen for this discussion deal with death in thehome on multiple levels of tone and emotion. Because the norm of the timeswas to deal with death (both before and after) in the home, both poemsapproach the topic with a distinct sense of intimacy and comfort. EmilyDickinson s poem, “There s been a Death, in the Opposite House,” isbelieved to have been written in 1862. Wallace Stevens poem “The Emperorof Ice-cream,” was published in his first collection of poetry, in 1923. Both poems have common elements (home and death, hustle and bustle, and acertain sense of irony), yet it is apparent that sixty-some years separatethem. An initial distinction can be made between the two poems sense ofperspective. The speaker in Dickinson s poem is noticeably outside the mainaction of the poem an outsider. The first line makes that clear: “There sbeen a Death, in the Opposite House.” The first line in Stevens poem,however, makes clear that the speaker is somehow an integral element of thegoings-on in this death house. Here, the speaker seems to be orchestratingthe whole event: “Call out the roller of big cigars.” The speaker needsthis particular person to perform tasks necessary for the wake. We, asreaders, are viewing the events from inside the home. This is in distinctcontrast to the patchwork story that the reader and speaker create throughDickinson s poem, based on outside clues and speculation. Another distinction can be made between the perspectives of the two poems situation in time. In the Dickinson poem the death seems to have justoccurred, perhaps an hour or two at the very least “As lately as Today.”Whereas the death in Stevens poem seems to have taken place perhaps a dayor two before the events of the poem. This impression is given, it seems,by the manner of events taking place in the poem they are not the eventsone would associate with the very day of death. The corpse must have beenalready washed and dressed, so that the characters of the poem can nowspend their time preparing flowers and food for the wake. In Dickinson spoem, the actions of the characters appear to be the more immediateconcerns of postmortem airing out the house, discarding the mattress of thedeceased, etc. Another difference between is noticeable in the tone of the two poems. Dickinson s poem is much more somber than Stevens . The very list ofcharacters that come and go and “hurry by” the death house is something notunlike the funeral procession that Dickinson alludes to near the end of herpoem, as the “Dark Parade.” The neighbors are first to arrive, second onlyto the immediate family, whose members are surely already inside. Then theDoctor comes and goes, followed by the defenestration of the mattress (YES!I finally get to use that word in a real setting! ….Sorry). At this pointthe person is finally dead, and those people who were not as close to theperson (say, the family, neighbors and doctor), can now join in this”procession” of visitation. The somber tone comes through in some of the word choices as well. Thehouse itself has a “numb look” to it. The mortician, or perhaps thecoffin-maker, is described as belonging to “the Appalling Trade.” It seemsworth noting the implication of “pall” or “pallbearer” in this particularword choice. What is consistent in the tone of the poem is the idea ofdeath as a looming figure. “There has been a Death,” to be sure, but thespeaker does not know this from first hand experience; the speaker can tellby the look of the house itself. The speaker wonders, like the boys, howthe death occurred. The signs make it clear that there has, in fact, been adeath, and it occurs to the speaker that a funeral procession will soonfollow. This realization is stated with a sense of dread, and that sense ofdread is heightened by the fact that the line is set apart from theotherwise regular four-line stanzas. There has been a death, but thespeaker seems preoccupied, not with what has been, but what will be. Conversely, there is an air of acceptance and lightheartedness in Stevens poem. The death has taken place and the time has come to move on. Thespeaker here allows that the women should wear comfortable clothing. Thechoice of words conveys a relaxed sensibility. Let the women wear suchclothing let the boys bring flowers, let be, let the lamp there is animplication of acceptance and tolerance of whatever might happen in therecurrent use of that single word. While the corpse is present in thesituation, the emphasis is on the living and on the creation of the scene,the creation of those things that will make the event alive for the living.

The call for the roller of cigars suggests a sense of relaxation. The callthat he whip desirous ice-cream suggests festivity rather than mourning. This poem, in contrast to Dickinson s, does not include people that do notbelong in the scene. There are no outsiders in the forms of Minister,Milliner, Doctor, or “the Man / Of the Appalling Trade.” The scene inStevens poem seems more like a household setting. The boys are asked tobring flowers in last month s newspapers, and there is a sense of comfortand familiarity in the fact that the boys must know where those newspapersare. The embroidered sheet is taken from the dresser of deal (a cheap typeof wood) missing three knobs the dresser seems to invoke a sense ofhumility. The furnishings are not being embellished or hidden from any ofthe type of outsiders that Dickinson s poem includes. What is more telling,is that the sheet gotten from that dresser is not likely to be long enoughto cover the whole of the corpse s body. This is not a major concern to thespeaker of the poem; again, this seems to illustrate a sense of comfort andacceptance of “things as they are.” The goings-on of the characters in TheEmperor of Ice-cream, are the goings-on of life. Life in the face of deathis the tone of this poem, versus the looming agony of death in Dickinson s. If we were to isolate the overall tone of each poem in a few choice words,Dickinson s poem is focused on “There s been” and “There ll be,” whileattitude of Stevens poem is best be discovered in the phrase “let be.”In Dickinson s poem each stanza has a central focus; the focus is an actionor an image, each one providing more certainty to the belief that there hasbeen a death. These images and actions lead up to the eventual, hauntingrealization that there will be a funeral procession. There is a focus ineach of the two stanzas in Stevens poem as well, in the couplets that endeach stanza. The difference between the two poems foci is that Dickinson sis image and Stevens is attitude. This is not to say that Dickinson s poemis without attitude; however, the attitude of her poem comes as the poembuilds it is an ancillary effect. In Stevens poem the couplets serve toput focus on themselves, and they take advantage of the spotlight to makeattitudinal statements. The corpse in Stevens poem is a corpse. “If her horny feet protrude, theycome / To show how cold she is, and dumb.” There is no attempt made, muchlike the cheap and worn dresser, to hide what the thing under the sheet is. The following line, the first line of the second couplet, actually works atspotlighting the fact that she is dead: “Let the lamp affix its beam.” Showit as it is a corpse. If this is an opinion of the speaker, the trueattitude, the true challenge to think, comes in the second line of thecouplet: “The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.” The couplet seemsto tell the reader, perhaps the other inhabitants of the poem, Look. She isdead. If you need help, here is a spotlight. See? She is dead and we areliving. We are the makers of our own lives. Come and have some ice-cream. Hurry, before it melts. The couplet at the end of the first stanza works in a similar manner. “Letbe be finale of seem. / The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.”(emphasis mine) The idea of letting “be” be the finale of “seem,” suggeststhat however something might appear whether it is an emotion, sensation, atstate of life or death in the end we must come to the realization that itis or was, and that we are or were. In any case, it comes down to that mostimportant of verbs to be. This poem answers Hamlet: “To be, or not to be,that is the question.” That answer is: to be. Life is too short to worryabout mere appearances; let the present be the guiding factor. Let what isbe the final understanding of what the thing means. In this situation, thewoman is dead. In life, the woman may have used the sheet to cover her feetand let her face be exposed, but she is dead now; if her feet are nowexposed, it only serves to reinforce the fact. This is her current state. The couplet does not end on a negative note, though. The declaration that”The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream” thrusts the focus to thepresent condition of the living, and calls the reader and the characters ofthe poem to relish living. The images and phrasing of Stevens poem help to illustrate this idea offreshness and vitality in the face of death. The calling out for thecigar-roller at this usual time of mourning, so that he may “whip / Inkitchen cups concupiscent curds” is an unlikely image. Take into accountthe playful alliteration, and the image becomes increasingly vibrant. If weinterpret the “wenches” as prostitutes, the scene becomes even morecomical. The high point of this amusing aspect of the poem is that thefocus of the wake, the deceased, is shrouded in a sheet too short for thelength of her body. And there is no reason to mind that it is too short,for it helps to illustrate how dumb she is. The rule that one must speakkindly of the dead is not in effect at this wake. And of course, the ethosof the poem is shrouded in that peculiar, rhyming couplet. The final resultis that a somber occasion has been portrayed in a highly comical, or at thevery least peculiarly funny, manner. The humor in Dickinson s poem, if one could call it humor, is much moresublime, much more dry. Perhaps a better way to describe these momentswould be as “play.” There are a couple of occasions where the mind can bemade to believe that there are alternate ways to read what is an otherwisestraightforward poem. One of these is the stanza about the minister. “TheMinister goes stiffly in ” is an obvious pun at the expense of the newlydead; the term “stiff” had begun to be associated with a corpse around thesame time that this poem was believed to have been written. The descriptionof the minister s entrance into the house is at least peculiar, appearingas if he “owned all the Mourners . . . and little Boys besides.” Anothermoment of play comes when the undertaker s (or coffin-maker s) visit isdescribed as his taking “measure of the house.” Measure being taken of theinhabitants demeanors, or of the corpse itself, so that a custom casketcan be crafted. But this is as playful as the poem becomes. The overallmood of the poem is consistent somber and looming. The final line of thepoem does impart a bit of comfort to the poem; “In just a country town”does lend itself to a reading of comfort and familiarity. In a small townthe inhabitants can recognize the death of a neighbor by reading the clueson the street. But this certainly is a comfort much different from the comfort of Stevens poem. Comfort for Dickinson is in the form of easily discernible signs ofdeath “easy as a Sign,” she writes. But the idea that these signs are”Intuition of the News” implies a threatening news. The speaker knows whatthe news is, but the news itself conjures “dark” and “appalling” thoughts. The final thoughts of the speaker negative. In the end, Dickinson s poem has a tone that one would expect to feel in apoem about death in the home. This is perhaps one reason why thisparticular poem is not nearly as memorable as Stevens poem, though bothshare a similar topic. Dickinson s choice of images, however accurate tothe truth of any actual events, are not as interesting as those in TheEmperor of Ice-cream. The flinging out of a mattress may be a lasting imageto those people who saw it happen, or knew the deceased, but aninsufficiently shrouded corpse, cold and dumb, is far more original. The”stiff” minister has a degree of wit, but the muscular roller of bigcigars, creating concoctions in the kitchen has a higher degree oforiginality. The characters in Stevens poem are far more realized than thestock characters of Dickinson s. And while the notion that a person canknow the news by watching the behaviors of the neighbors is certainlycharming, it lacks the rhetorical edge and intellectual ambiguities thatStevens packs into two rhymed couplets. Both of theses poems are worthwhile reading, and both capture an elementthat is now absent from American culture. However, the sixty years thatseparate the creation of these two poems seems to have provided a degree ifsophistication which has made Wallace Stevens vision of death at home avision shared by all of his readers. Both poems have a sense of multipleemotion, but Stevens poem is much more realized, the emotions much moreoriginal, which in the end makes his much more memorable than Dickinson s.