Obstacles In Emily Dickinson's Poetry

Succeeding in life, or achieving one’s own goals, seems to be the central theme in everyone’s life as is in Emily Dickinson’s poetry. Dickinson expresses the lessons learned in life throughout her poems. There can be many hardships and obstacles preventing one from their own succession. The prevailing of these obstacles leads to one’s success is life. In the poem “’Hope’ is the thing with feathers…” Dickinson uses a bird metaphorically as hope. The feathers as she tells are the hope in a person. The feathers create the wing and let the bird fly so in a sense it’s as if hope is lost in one place and can be found in another, as if flying to a new hope. In another sense somebody’s wings, or hopes, can be broken down by life’s hardships which can lead to a sense of hopelessness. Hope perches in the soul which Dickinson uses as the home of the
Success can differ from person to person based on what they want to achieve. “Success is counted sweetest; by those who ne’er succeed…” (Dickinson 1-4). This can also be made as a reference to envy. People want what they do not have. To feel success at its sweetest, “to comprehend a nectar” one must feel the “sorest need” or great hardship either through failure or with obstacles. Overcoming these obstacles will lead to one’s success and to some, success is the sweetest to those who cherish the opportunity. The “Purple Host” who took the enemy flag does not know victory better than the defeated enemies. “As he defeated-dying; on whose forbidden ear; the distant strains …” Dickinson explains in the last stanzas of her poem that the defeated army understands the success of victory better than the victors. The reasoning behind this is that in order to understand the feeling of succeeding one must feel failure first to truly understand triumph. The victors do not know failure, which in this case is death, which Dickinson states will prevent them from understanding triumph or