Dickinson 389
The speaker in Dickinson's poem is noticeably outside the main action of the poem. The first line makes that clear: "There's been a Death, in the Opposite House." Dickinson creates a patchwork story that the reader and speaker create through Dickinson's poem, based on outside clues and speculation. In Dickinson's poem, each stanza has a central focus; the focus is an action or an image, each one providing more certainty to the belief that there has been a death. These images and actions lead up to the eventual, haunting realization that there will be a funeral procession. Dickinson also cleverly plays with words, puns, and sound associations. The attitude and emphasis of her poem comes as the poem builds, surprising offering no comfort on the subject of death at the end.In Dickinson's poem, the death seems to have just occurred, perhaps an hour or two-at the very least "As lately as Today." In Dickinson's poem, the actions of the characters appear to be the more immediate concerns of postmortem-airing out the house, discarding the mattress of the deceased, etc. Dickinson's poem is somber. The very list of characters that come and go and "hurry by" the death house is something not
The somber tone comes through in some of the word choices as well. The house itself has a "numb look" to it. The mortician, or perhaps the coffin-maker, is described as belonging to "the Appalling Trade." The "pall" in "Appalling" sounds like pallbearer. What is consistent in the tone of the poem is the idea of death as a looming figure. "There has been a Death," to be sure, but the speaker does not know this from first hand experience; the speaker can tell by the look of the house itself. The speaker wonders, like the boys, how the death occurred. The signs make it clear that there has, in fact, been a death, and it occurs to the speaker that a funeral procession will soon follow. This realization is stated with a sense of dread and excitement, and this sense is heightened by the fact that the line is set apart from the otherwise regular four-line stanzas. Dickinson abruptly goes from talking about the present to talking about the future. There has been a death, but the speaker seems preoccupied, not with what has been, but what will be. unlike the funeral procession that Dickinson alludes to near the end of her poem, as the "Dark Parade." The neighbors are first to arrive, second only to the immediate family, whose members are sur
Some common words found in the essay are:
Appalling Trade, House Dickinson, Comfort Dickinson, Dark Parade, Emily Dickinson, dickinson's poem, funeral procession, death occurred, funeral procession dickinson, country town, poem death, poem stanza, death speaker, procession dickinson,
Approximate Word count = 836
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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