Emily Dickinson’s “A Certain Slant of Light” Analysis Essay Essay

In her poem, Theres a certain Slant of precipitate, Emily Dickinson uses fables and kitchen stovery to pay back the tonus of sacrament and despair at passs twilight. The sloping light that she wait ons, is a metaphor for her battle with depression. Anyone who is familiar with Dickinsons downplay will admit a let on understanding of what she is trying to adduce in this poem. Dickinson was known as a recluse and spent or so of her life isolated from the outside world. The few people that she did come in contact with over the years argon said to have had a major impact on her poetry. Although, her main muse of her work seems to be despair and sexual conflict.Whats interesting about the poem is that Dickinson uses metaphors to spot depression, as well as religion. It is clear that the poet intends to highlight the light in the afternoon with its heaviness and solemnity. The time of year that the poet is describing is winter, while the time of daytime is twilight, or the afternoon, as said in the poem. Often times, and how Ive interpret it, the season, plus the time of day freighter be considered a metaphor for dying. In Dickinsons, Theres a certain Slant of light, she utilize a metered rhyming scheme that follows the pattern of ABCB. Since the poem uses rhyming, its unappealing form. There are four stanzas that near have a hymn- deal rhythm. Its unclear if that was intentional or not collectible the religious metaphors indoors the stanzas.Dickinson utilise trochaic and iambic meters with out the poem. She also used stressed and unstressed syllables. The opening line of the poem, states the title and at the homogeneous time, introduces what the poem is essentially about. The poet goes on to say that the winter light, which slants in through the windows, weighs upon the verbalizers soul uniform the Heft of Cathedral tunes. Organs, with their multiple pipes, strike ears and modify Cathedrals with a sound that often leaves you with a sha deing of unwelcome solemnity and grandiosity. This can leave listeners with an overwhelming olfaction that lays heavy in their existence.The image of winter, as well as the organ music, adds gloom to the poem. Theres a sense of anguish that the speaker is sensation and you believe that a certain slant of light capability connote hope, barely not even sunshine on a winter afternoon could read happiness into the speakers life. Winter itself is a symbol of death and decay, opposed to summer, which is characterized by sunshine and joy. Like the Cathedral tunes, the light reminds her of desolation. The feeling of despair is transported into an auditory feeling, which is where the organs come in. The word heft has ii meanings, weight and significance. It can refer to the cathedral tunes, and also the speaker being weighed down by despair.In the second stanza, the light oppresses her soul it gives her a ethereal woe. The pick up of slanted light is a metaphor for ideas and how it feels to experience depression. This kind of heavenly hurt leaves no scar behind, provided it creates an internal difference that brings a change in demeanor. The phrase ethereal Hurt brings together a feeling of elation and the reality of what the speaker is feeling. The beginning rhyme of this phrase is used as an emphasis.In the third stanza, the starting line ii lines are, None may teach it Any Tis the Seal Despair - This is aspect that no one is able to teach us what death feels like. We can prepare for it, in the sense of what we believe will come after, but the actual physical and mental feeling is unknown. Death is very freakish in the way that we dont know how our lives will end, but its on everyones mind. In the line, An violet distress, Sent us of the Air (11-12) the speaker has made a connection with the winter light, the Heavenly Hurt, and the feeling of internal difference and despair. In Dickinsons poem, an imperial affliction is a metaphor for an all-enc ompassing despair that comes from the air. Whenever we have a strong emotion, like happiness, we tend to see the world around us in a brighter light and over all it makes us feel joyful. If were feeling down, like the speaker of this poem, we see the world as how we feel inside things look unpleasant, and grey and dismal. Were unable to see a ray of hope that is coming through the window in the form of sunshine.In the fourth stanza, when death, or it as the speaker calls it, comes everything listens. When soulfulness dies, those still on this earth sometimes experience stillness in nature, as if the world is on obtain and listening to us. In Dickinsons poem the stillness comes from the slant of light, and the landscape and shadows listen and figuratively hold their breath. The landscape and shadows are personified in this stanza. The capitalization of Landscape and Shadows gives the impression that the speaker is referring to someone she knows. The mood here changes quite a bit co mpared to the first three stanzas of this poem. You get a sense of anticipation instead of despair, and the subjection that the speaker has felt has lifted and now shes feeling light and maybe some what alluring. In the final two lines of the poem, the poet uses sort of a morbid imagery.When it goes, tis like the Distance, On the look of Death. (15-16) Dead people have a distant look to them since the life in their being is at peace(p) somewhere else. We also see the exit of winter light at the end of the day in the same distant way we power see some deaths. Death is mysterious to those on earth, just as the sunset in the heart of winter is. The day is blanketed in shadows due to the suns proximity to earth during this season, and as it sets, its a gradual process, that sometimes leaves the world at a standstill, much like death. The dash at the end serves as emphasis that a layover wouldnt leave behind. As readers, were left with no authorised answers in regards to the light or the speakers internal despair. Dickinson almost made this intentional in a way that the reader might feel an equal despair or oppression at the number of the poem, or the light might leave us with a feeling of enlightenment and hope.At the end of this poem, were left with a feeling of despair, that Dickinson almost made intentional in order for the reader to better understand how the speaker feels as the light breaks through the windows on winter afternoons. Emily Dickinsons use of imagery and metaphors highlights her battle with depression and isolation.Theres a certain Slant of light (about 1861)Emily DickinsonTheres a certain Slant of light,Winter Afternoons That oppresses, like the HeftOf Cathedral Tunes Heavenly Hurt, it gives us We can find no scar,But internal Difference,Where the Meanings, are None may teach it Any Tis the Seal Dispair An imperial afflictionSent us of the Air When it comes, the Landscape listens Shadows hold their breath When it goes, tis like the Distan ceOn the look of Death Works Cited PageKennedy, X. J.. An intromission to poetry. Boston Little, Brown, 1966. Print.