Symbolic Images: the Poetry of Emily Dickinson

The poetry of the Imagists is short, simple, and quite literal in its meaning in order to create a vivid picture in the reader's mind. When they describe an object, it means just what they say. A tree is a tree, a flower is a flower, and a bird is a bird. Imagists have little use for abstract words or ideas, and tend to shy away from them as much as possible. Emily Dickinson doesn't fall under the same category as the Imagists, as she doesn't use the same techniques as the Imagists. Dickinson's poems center on very vivid images, with very different takes on them. They very often contain abstract concepts, which are often given concrete principles and are incorporated as part of her images. She implants deeper meanings behind her images, and tends to rely on a different technique than the Imagists. The majority of her work relies heavily on a different type of imagery – symbolism. One of the poems where this symbolism is most evident is "My Life Had Stood – A Loaded Gun." This poem is obviously based around a strong metaphoric image, as Dickinson is comparing herself to a gun belonging to someone else. In the poem, she uses the gun as a symbol to show her role in the patriarchal society she lived in. The first stanza shows this feeling: My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun – In Corners – till a Day The Owner passed – identified – And carried me away –
In this stanza, Dickinson never explicitly mentions the owner to be a man, but as women didn't use guns in those times, it is understood that the owner would be male, which she does clarify later in the poem. Even without an outright declaration of male ownership, these lines imply the role that women were supposed to take in Dickinson's time, sitting silently in the background until a man wishes to take them away. In the last stanza of the poem, Dickinson echoes the same theme of needing a man to access her power. Though I than He – may longer live He longer must – than I – For I have but the power to kill, Without – the power to die –
These lines tell of Dickinson's feeling of dependence upon a male figure. One can only guess which male figure Dickinson had in mind when she wrote this poem, but it is easy to see that whoever it is, she feels he must live longer than her, as she can't do anything without him. The lines "For I have but the power to kill/Without - the power to die –" sum up Dickinson's feelings of the power of women. She obviously feels that women do have tremendous power, but in the heavily male-oriented society of her time, that power lay dormant without a man to use it. Another poem heavily laden with symbolic images is "The Lightning is a Yellow Fork." This poem uses symbolism in a different way than the first. Rather than using symbol to show her view of the roles of women, she uses it to pose a question to the reader without explicitly asking one. This poem closely resembles the poems of the Imagists, as she makes a short description of a lighting strike. However, the description becomes only half the poem, as she goes deep into metaphor and abstract ideas. In the first stanza, she uses metaphor to compare the fork dropped from a table. The Lightning is a yellow Fork From Tables in the sky By inadvertent fingers dropt The awful Cutlery
This stanza shows how lightning seems to be an accident, dropped on Earth objectively wherever it may land. The following stanza seems to ask the question of where the fork was dropped from. Of mansions never quite disclosed And never quite concealed The Apparatus of the Dark To ignorance revealed.
In these lines, the reader can see the implicit question, where does this lightning come from? Dickinson seems to wonder what is hidden up in the sky that we can't see, and displays the disappointment of mortal beings not being able to see the riches beyond this world, and it's gone all to quick, leaving us in the dark again. In "I Felt A Funeral, In My Brain," Dickinson uses a recurring theme in many of her poems, death, in a different way. Rather than using death as the theme of the poem, she uses it as a symbolism for old ideas and personalities dying off. In this poem, the speaker creates the image of a funeral in her head, suggesting that someone she once was has passed away. In the opening stanza, Dickinson seems to almost give us a hint of who exactly has passed away. I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, And Mourners to and fro Kept treading – treading – till it seemed That Sense was breaking through –
She suggests that whatever has died in the mind of the speaker has allowed sense to come into her mind. Whatever is being buried and mourned over in the speaker's mind was preventing her from developing her common sense, and as time passes, she is gaining a new sense of what is. These clues from the first stanza carry over into the last stanza, where we are given more of a glimpse into the identity of the deceased. And then a Plank in Reason, broke, And I dropped down, and down – And hit a World, at every plunge, And finished knowing – then –
The first line describes the pallbearers carrying the coffin off, when a board breaks and the coffin plummets down into the reaches beneath the floor. The phrase, "a Plank in Reason", shows an example of Dickinson's ability to give abstract concepts a concrete identity. She uses reason as a physical object to connote that the base of the speaker's reality, her sense of reason, was faulty and gave way, showing her much more beyond her reason that she could now be aware of. She now holds a new idea of reason and common sense to replace her old ideas. The use of the word "I" in the second line shows us that inside the coffin is in fact the speaker of the poem. This stanza suggests that the person being buried is perhaps the speaker's innocence. It tells us that with the death of her naivety, she falls into a whole new set of worlds that she didn't know about previously. After her fall, she now has a new grasp of reality and knows more than she had before. Emily Dickinson loved to use images. Her poems are all heavily based around images, and she has an amazing talent for describing them. Each of these poems contains a different theme, and revolved around different images. While each of these poems would stand up on its own, Dickinson tied many of them together with her tendency to come back to symbolism. Like the Imagists after her, she liked to paint pictures in the reader's mind with her words, but what made her stand out was the deeper meaning she laid beyond those images.