The way the trees are ‘panting’ suggests the wind is very tough and it is blowing through them, she used personification here. ‘And Rivers and the Houses ran’, this also has a double meaning. It could mean that the rivers overflowed with the storm or that the houses and the river were being blown away with the wind. The final line ends with ‘And yet abide the World’, Emily Dickinson wrote this to show that the world can go through all sorts of natural or unnatural disasters, through hurricanes and tidal waves, but the world still remains here, because it is so permeable. It also has a religious meaning, because Emily Dickinson was a devout Christian, God can send down anything but his world still remains.
‘A Thunder-Storm’ is one of Emily Dickinson’s most sinister poems. The first line reads ‘The Wind begun to rock the Grass, With threatening Tunes and low-’, this line first suggests that it is rather soothing as if there is a baby in a pram, but then becomes more sinister suggesting an imagery of an evil nursemaid rocking a baby in a pram. Also it shows imagery such as personification and metaphors. The next line says ‘He threw a Menace at the Earth, A Menace at the Sky’ suggesting the wind is so strong it is taking on the earth and the sky pushing the clouds and making them move quicker. The next stanza says the leaves ‘unhooked themselves’; Emily Dickinson uses personification to describe the leaves being blown away in the wind. The next line says that ‘the Dust did scoop itself like Hands And threw away the road’. She again uses personification to describe the scenes of the thunderstorm, suggesting that the dust made its own hands and threw itself away, to make the wind invisible.
The next stanza starts ‘The Thunder hurried slow’ this line is a paradox meaning everything comes quicker than you think. It is also an oxymoron with the two opposites put together.
The next line is ‘The Lightning showed a Yellow Beak’, also having a double meaning, that the yellow beak of a raven, which has a yellow beak and is black or as lightning, which also appears from behind a cloud. Another reference to a bird is in the next line when she describes lightning as a ‘livid claw’, the claw of a bird, comparing the weather to a bird. In the next stanza Emily Dickinson writes ‘The Birds put up Bars to Nests’ which is similar to what people do when a storm is brewing, they bar up their windows, she shows a comparison between birds and humans, making them personified. She then writes ‘That held the Dams had parted hold’ she uses a personal imagery that God has opened his hands. Therefore it has rained. She then makes another final reference to God and Christianity that her ‘Fathers house’ had just missed lightning. In these final lines Emily Dickinson is trying to make the point of the weather respecting Christianity and vice versa.
This poems is not only the darker side to the weather but also the respect Christianity and the weather have for each other, like they work together, unlike the Old Testament where the weather was regarded as bad. She also tries to show a link in these lines to birds and weather.
The final poem is ‘When I hoped...’ The poem involves three feelings, hope, fear and despair. In this first stanza Emily Dickinson writes like she is dead, looking back on her life, hoping to be resurrected. The second stanza about hope she writes ‘Hope it was that kept me warm-Not Merino shawl’. She writes this because she feels she does not need her Merino shawl, because she has hope inside. The second feeling is fear. The first stanza on fear Emily Dickinson writes about the first day she feared. Linked with the first feeling, the fear of not resurrecting. She also writes that she is the only one not moving, as the world was sunning itself. The third theme is despair, the despair of knowing that she would die, even though everyone dies one day. She explains it was not hot or cold, it was just dark. There is a line in this stanza that after day there is night; after hope, despair. She explains that despair is like nature hesitating, a void, like something you would want to block out.
Emily Dickinson also uses the weather like a mood, the opposite to pathetic fallacy. When the feeling is bad, the weather does not match the feeling. In the first stanzas about hope, the weather is windy and frosty. This cold weather she felt, could not hurt her because she was full of hope inside. The third and forth stanzas about fear the weather is generally nicer but not for her. The sun is shining as far as she can see and the birds are singing but she is fearful, and sad. The last stanza is dark like a void, she does not know really what to feel, it was just a void for her because it was neither hot nor cold.
All the poems I read have a very obvious common theme, the weather. Emily Dickinson portrayed many different feelings through the weather and many different themes. She also used the weather to make many contrasts between things and used it to reflect religious feelings.
The poem I prefer is the last poem I wrote about; ‘When I hoped...’ I feel that this poem has the most feeling and better imagery. Emily Dickinson, in my view goes a lot deeper into the poem, than just about hope, fear and despair. When I read the poem I get a deeper meaning of a woman’s fear of life in general, not just death. I think she spent more time on this poem than the other poems I have read, putting more imagery on how the weather reflects the mood she is in. therefore I feel that this poem is the deepest and most meaningful and therefore my favourite.
