Analysis of After Great Pain A Formal Feeling Comes by Emily Dickinson :: essays research papers

In After great pain, a formal feeling comes(341), Emily Dickinson offers the reader a transitus observation of the term just after the death of a loved one. Dickinson questions where one goes in the afterlife asking, Of Ground, or Air or somewhere else (line 6) We often remember those who grumble before us, as we ourselves, as morbid as it may be, with everyday, be brought closer to our own deaths. As used in most of her poetry, she continues in iambic meter with stressed then unstressed syllables. Dickinson, however, straying a flair(p) from her norm of 8-6-8-6 syllable lines repeating, uses a seemingly random combination of ten, eight, six, and four syllables, with the stainless send-off stanza of ten syllables per lines. Line three lends itself to ambiguity as Dickinson writes, The stringent Heart questions was it He, that bore, he, refers to the heart, yet she doesnt specify exactly what he bore. Dickinson refers to the Quartz unsafe growing out of the ground as on e dies, lending itself to a certain imagery of living after death (lines 8-9). Although the poem holds no humor, she stretches to find what goes on after death. As we get to the end of the form of letting go of the one dying, Dickinson reminds us of the figurative and literal coldness of death. The cold symbolizes an emotion and lifeless person as well as the lack of blood circulation. Bringing reference her off syllable lines, the author of Dickinsons Fascicles, says the first stanza is held together by the structured iambic pentameter, in addition to use rhyming couplets as in, ?Bore? and ?before.? Due to Dickinson?s submergence in nature, she emphasizes organic matter, with both her use and capitalization of ?Heart? and ?Nerves.? Although she draws attention to those of which are organic, she shifts to emphasize those of which are inorganic, for those of ?Ground,? ?Air,? and ?Quartz.? Analyzing the two four syllable lines, ?A Wooden way/Regardless grown? (7-8), the way can be viewed as an unctuous mourning path that society attempts to set individuals toward to cope with their emotions during troubled times. Wood, evening though an organic matter is used negatively here to pull back an artificial reconstruction of this natural element into a coffin. Looking farther at an inorganic element, quartz, it signifies the sharp pain of a loss.