Emily Dickinson The Feet of People Walking Home
One of Emily Dickinson's poems, formally titled "The feet of people walking home," is of some interest in its own merit. Unlike some of Dickinson's other poems, such as the ones that exist among other versions due to a few dissimilarities, this poem is duplicated verbatim. To the untrained eye, this triviality would often be overlooked, were it not for the fact that Emily Dickinson had not intended on publishing many of her poems. Why, then, did she duplicate this poem? Perhaps a more in-depth analysis of the poem, as well as the current events in Dickinson's life, would answer this query. Estimated to have been written in the year 1858, the poem begins its first stanza by conveying the emotions of gaiety and joyfulness, which are associated with passage to heaven. A much more somber note pervades the second stanza, in which Dickinson uses metaphors to compare the entrance to heaven with the act of theft. The third stanza combines the previous two by hinting at the theory that those who are already in heaven do not want more people entering heaven's gates, because that would diminish the high status that heaven and angels hold. The tone in the first stanza is of joyousness and excitement, as people make their way to heaven. Di
It seems, then, that one's interest for this poem is twofold. The first interest is the purpose for the poem's duplication. A possible motive can be brought to light with a quick look at the original manuscripts, at the end of which there is a snippet of another poem. Perhaps the duplication process was enacted merely to separate "The feet of people walking home" from the other, much shorter poem. If this is the case, the duplication may be of no significance at all. The second interest, the poem's meaning, is undoubtedly the most interesting of the two. The poem could be about Emily Dickinson's thoughts regarding an unloving father. Yet, with Dickinson's multitude of metaphors, any meaning can be interpreted for this poem. Wolff, Cynthia Griffin. Emily Dickinson. Reading, Massachusetts: Perseus Books, 1988. Franklin, R.W. The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Variorium Edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998. Franklin, R.W. The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1981. The second stanza shares a relation to the first, but it could be described as being completely opposite in tone. Dickinson uses the words "extorted," "larceny," and "death" to emphasize the crime that is personified here. Dickinson uses more
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Approximate Word count = 928
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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