I Started Early-Took My Dog

The speaker of Emily Dickinson’s “I started Early – Took my Dog –” dramatizes the conflict between nature and man. The speaker dramatizes her need to unite with nature, but with the ever present reluctance of humanity, by describing a scene in which she is friendly with the ocean and they both yearn for each other until she leaves for good. The speaker begins the poem wanting to be a part of nature, as she gives herself over to the sea, but abruptly realizes the power behind the sea and how easily it could hurt her and returns to a life of humanity rather than in nature. Through this storyline, the poet describes the conflict between nature and man. Throughout the poem, the only information given by the poet about the speaker are the few facts that she is a woman, through her “Boddice,” that she owns and is with a dog, through “Took my Dog,” and finally her seeming independence from
The speaker starts by stating that she “started Early – Took [her] Dog – / And visited the Sea –” providing setting for the rest of the poem, early morning by the seaside, until she comes to “[meet] the Solid Town –” which presents an extended setting of a seaside town (1-2, 21). Finally, the poet is seemingly writing about this experience as a way to exemplify her unity with nature, how truly difficult it is to remove herself from it, but also the necessity of her leaving.
The poet begins her story with setting in the first two lines, but then moves to speak about friendly mermaids within the same stanza, exemplifying that it is not necessarily about where she is, but how she feels and how she interacts with nature. Her description of “Mermaids in the Basement” who “Came out to look at” her provides for a sense of unity by describing the creatures of the sea as friendly enough to interact with her, and describes nature as if it were a house with her metaphor relating the sea to a “Basement” (3, 4). Dickinson’s speaker uses a soft tone to tell her