Dickinson:Believer or not?

A detailed Summary of Dickinson:Believer or not?

While attending Amherst College, Emily Dickinson became fascinated with Dr. Hitchcock's philosophies. Dr. Hitchcock was the originator of the American Scientific Association and President of Amherst College. Dickinson loved to read "Flowers of North America," along with other works by Hitchcock. She would attend his lectures, not knowing that one of his sermons would change her views on Christianity for the rest of her life. Pollitt writes that "In Dr. Hitchcock's philosophy of a natural religion as opposed to the purely scriptural doctrine, Emily's mind took it's first stride"(Pollitt 34).

He believed that 'the spiritual body will transcend the natural body; that it will have means of receiving knowledge far more delicate, certain, and rapid; that it will be possessed by an activity incapable of fatigue and eminently fitted for abstraction; that the memory will be perfect... an organization so exquisite as never to mislead or allure from duty... There will be recognition in heaven, all marriage vows dissolved, and the lover and his beloved will become but angles of God (Pollitt 35).

Such a sermon was too convincing and too striking for her to ever forget it. Two of Emily Dickinson's cr

Dickinson's quest for God is identical to her battle for personal integrity. I believe that she blames God for her own social standings. Dickinson was a recluse due to the fact that she felt that she had no where to belong. Dickinson wants with all her heart to feel as if she belongs to something or someone. When this falls through, she blames her maker for her mishaps. Her own soul and body upset by an earthly love, she unconsciously felt how close this human love stood to the godly love and how each in a measure interpreted the other. Both naturally and supernaturally she found a redeemer. A new understanding in love obviously resembled for her a conversion in faith. She tells how faith is lost in this poem.

Dickinson's absorption in the concept of eternal life was merely heightened by love, and she seeks baroque equivalents of the courtly or religious image-mingling the two-to express the fact.

Dickinson's story consequently turns from the failure of the outward and visible churches to the partial success of the inner and spiritual life privately cultivated, sequentially not without similarity and reference to traditional ethics in religious studies. Dickinson, to use the terminology of her own day, preferred transcendentalism to Christianity.

If we consider these aspects of Dickinson's faith, we are in a better position to perceive why she was not unduly bothered by the unattractive or harsh features oh the orthodox deity. As long as Dickinson retained her confidence in the Heavenly Father's ability and willingness to grant her prayers, she could overlook any possible distaste (Molson 410).

Like an adversity. (Dickinson 465 line 9-12)

To Emily Dickinson, religion is a mystery and a questio

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Approximate Word count = 1167
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English