Emily Dickinson didn't fit a common model for literary greatness of her time. She differed from every other New England writer of the nineteenth century. She was ahead of time, rejecting the standards followed by her contemporaries. Emily Dickinson changed literary theory and stirred public imagination.
Dickinson’s poetry is filled with thought provoking moments as she focuses on topics that do not have a definitive interpretation, such death, insanity, and the soul. Nevertheless, Dickinson explores these subjects, not for the purpose of seeking an answer, but for the sake of exploring them to find new startling images for her poems. It is because these subjects cannot be defined that Dickinson finds their exploration so essential and eccentrically focuses on them in her poetry. Dickinson’s use of imagery, enjambment, and her original approach are the reason for startling the reader and provoking powerful thoughts within them.
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How strange that when inside a scenario very similar to the one she mourns for in “Contrasts”, Dickinson seems just as miserable. Therefore, one might conclude that her reclusive lifestyle was both her own private heaven and hell. She seems to crave joy and yet chooses to be melancholy. The choice of the word “abstinence” in the first poem seems to imply that she somewhat consciously denies herself the guilty pleasure of happiness, perhaps feeling it sinful to enjoy life when others, like the soldiers she mentions, are suffering. The words “stimulate” and “spices” contrast with her favor of the bland. This is similar to the juxtaposition of the warmth of the scene inside the open door to her lost plight outside in the second poem. Within the two descriptions of diametrically different experiences, both of which are encounters with others, one can simultaneously feel the heartache of Dickinson’s loneliness as well as her overwhelming desire to seek comfort in…
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