The poem basically talks about Emily Dickinson’s inner feelings. From the way the poem is structured and the way she articulates her wordings, it directly points out towards her inner feelings. However, it’s not just inner feelings in the ordinary sense, the poem greatly relates to her inner struggles. Throughout the poem, Dickinson significantly speaks of her struggles, as a result, she questions God several times. However, she primarily relies on faith at all times more so in the suffering that she endures (Dickinson 16).
Moreover, she also touches on the theme of her confusion in respect to her self-identity. A critical outlook of her poem reveals that at some given instances she lost focus on her self-identity, an issue that makes her rely on hope. The poem majorly addresses the theme of hope. It is the basic foundation of Dickinson; the only hope for her future and a means of recovering from her lost self-identity. Dickinson lives alone and only gets to become a person as people read her works (William 5).
Nonetheless, she vividly recognizes her loneliness and goes further to ask who she really was if none was reading her poems. Dickinson had a feeling of being imprisoned, however, not been imprisoned in the usual way but a prisoner within herself. Her work greatly touches on issues to do with oneself, to prove it, she entirely talks of issues to do with herself in the entire poem. To add on, her literary believes in the power of words. To her, the strongest voice she has is her own voice, a voice she can only use in poetry (Dickinson 17).
The sound and the rhythm of the poem is quite challenging and needs a deeper though in order to understand. As a matter of fact, the rhythm pattern of the poem qualifies to be called a deceptive comforting package. However, to be precise, the rhythm structure of the poem is iambic, that is to say, there are typically alternating lines known as the iambic tetrameter, that is, odd numbered lines. The poet effectively employs the rhythm in a soothing and melodic way that sends the reader into visualizing a conventionalized and formulaic content apart from what is gotten from ordinary poems (Dickinson 18). Moreover, Dickinson is regarded as a great poet in the way she articulates her sound and rhythms.
She is one of the greatest metaphysical and psychological gamers evident from her ability to use her rhythmic structure to encapsulate a more vivid and captivating syntax. As a matter of fact, she greatly succeeds inconspicuously evoking the aspect of imagery. Her stylistic devices can be attributed to her unique poems that gained worldwide accolade. As a matter of sound, the poem can be viewed as one of the best (William 5). The sound she elicits from the poem gives a feeling of what hope is. Furthermore, the sounds can only be heard during tough times, hope is more evident in the poem.
There is exist a metrical pattern in the poem, furthermore, that is an aspect that is typical with her works. The most conspicuous metric patterns employed by Dickinson are the iambic trimeter and alternating lines. Alternating lines can be seen in line 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 while the iambic trimeter can be seen in line 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11. However, another pattern can also be seen from lines 2 up to 12, it is what is called a non-iambic foot. Dickinson makes the use of rhyme scenes to clearly present her points. Furthermore, the rhyme scenes vividly elucidate the aspect of hope within the readers (William 6)
The rhyme scene is regularly holding to the fact that only the last letter constitute the rhyme scene. This type of rhyme scene is greatly related to Dickinson, it can be seen throughout her poems. The poem’s rhyme scene is: ceee cdcd abab. Moreover, the dominant sound of the poem is the “S” sound, yet again, it contributes the overall rhyme scene. The trimeter and the rhyme scene brings an effect of a hissing wind in the background as one reads the poem. The primary objective of the “S” sound is to bring about the hissing sound (William 6)
In the third stanza alone, Dickinson gives out a personal testimony, from her words, we get to know the actual feeling she was going through. The efficacy of the poem is revealed as that hope which was Dickinson’s only thing left, is in the human soul. Dickinson goes further to assert that after hearing the bird song, the only thing she could think of was relating hope to having feathers, as it is known, its only birds that had feathers. Besides, she says that the bird’s version of hope was astonishingly generous (Dickinson 16).
However, alliteration is a stylistic device that is not used by Dickinson. Her works majorly rely on iambic trimeter and rhyme scenes. Through her writing styles, she is also to give a feeling of what hope is. By saying that hope is the only thing that has feathers and perches on the soul, she was directly insinuating that its hope that keeps people moving, by soothing people’s souls. As a matter of fact, it’s only hope that can soothe the soul and give people a yearning for the future. All the writing styles employed by Dickinson give the poem a clear meaning and greatly illustrate on her major theme of hope (Dickinson 16). It’s through the styles that hope is revealed to us.
Works Cited
Dickinson, Emily. The Poems of Emily Dickinson. Hope is the Only Thing with Feathers. Chicago: Harvard University Press, 1999.
William, Michael. An Analysis of Emily Dickinson Poems. "Hope" is the thing with Feathers. London: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
