Hope Is The Thing With Feathers- By Emily Dickinson

Hope is a Bird that Perches in Your Soul What is hope? The dictionary defines hope as desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment. Hope is the silver lining in the dark rain cloud urging us to press on despite adversity. For some, hope is a spiritual belief, while for others it is something that comes from within. Emily Dickinson’s poem is actually untitled, as is most of her poems. Many publishers use the first line of her poems as the title. â€Å"â€Å"Hope† is the Thing with Feathers—â€Å"is a poem that creates a metaphor of hope through a bird. The hope that is within the speaker is much like a bird that continues to fly inside her despite hardships. While we may all experience some dark times, hope offers us encouragement. The poetic diction and vivid imagery used to illustrate her metaphor reveals Dickinson’s deeply personal sentiments which allows readers to connect with her point of view. Emily Dickinson was a reclusive American poet born in 1830. Although she was very close to her family, she rarely left her house and had very few visitors. She lived in a world of her books and was mostly self-taught. She was part of a generation of women who began using writing as a form of expression. Though much of her life still remains a mystery, it has been said that the reason for her reclusiveness was because she suffered from epilepsy. During the nineteenth century, epilepsy was largely misunderstood and her well-to-do family attempted to keep her illnessShow MoreRelatedHope Is the Thing with Feathers by Emily Dickinson: An Analysis604 Words   |  2 Pagesï » ¿Hope Is the Thing with Feathers by Emily Dickinson In the first stanza, Hope is the Thing with Feathers, Dickinson has made use of metaphorical bird image to explain the conceptual idea of hope (Dickinson McNeil 2002). Hope is not a conscious thing, it is lifeless, but by offering hope feathers, the poet creates an image in peoples minds. The feathers imagery invokes hope they represent hope as feathers enable a person to fly and give the picture of flying away to another new hope andRead MoreHope Is The Thing With Feathers By Emily Dickinson And Dare I Hope1340 Words   |  6 PagesThe word hope is often used in moments of despair, more precisely to lift people out of those moments. For so many, hope is the light at the end of the tunnel, in the moments when it is hard to get back up it is often this ambiguous term that helps them get up. Of course, all words take on several meanings, and there are always different ways someone can interpret a word. However, according to the Oxford Online Dictionary hope is â€Å"a feeling of ex pectation and desire for a particular thing to happen†(OxfordRead MoreSymbolism In Emily Dickinson733 Words   |  3 Pages Emily Dickinson once said,  ¨The Soul selects her own Society- Then- shuts the door- To her divine Majority- Present no more- ¨. Emily Dickinson is a famous American poet who lived most of her life in complete solitude, often times only interacting with family and attending Church. In her time alone, she wrote poems about how others acted with each other, and her own beliefs about life. Emily Dickinson utilizes symbolism and imagery in the poems  ¨Im Nobody! Who are you? ¨,  ¨Hope is the thing withRead MoreEmily Dickinson Poetry Essay1591 Words   |  7 PagesEmily Dickinson’s Poetry There is a lot more to poetry than just the words themselves. â€Å"What William Shakespeare called, â€Å"the mind’s eye† also plays a role† (Borus34). What that means is that your experiences and thoughts will add to your understanding. Dickinson had an active mind and a style so unique and unusual with her writing. Something that was very unusual about her writing was that she never put a title to her poems. Just like many poets, she used a wide assortment of literary devices suchRead MoreDickinson’s Poetry Is Startling and Eccentric. Discuss.1229 Words   |  5 PagesDickinson’s poetry is startling and eccentric. Discuss. Perhaps one of the aspects that draw us to the poetry of Dickinson is its eccentricity and startling nature. In her poetry, Emily Dickinson explores a number of different themes including death, hope, nature, pain and love. The trademark signs of a Dickinson poem are her hallmark dashes she uses. Her dashes suggest that there is more to the story than she is writing down. Another characteristic of Dickinson’s poetry is the capitalizationRead MoreContributions Of Emily Dickinson1045 Words   |  5 Pagesideas to flow. When alone an individual can be with their thoughts, dreams and hopes. Emily Dickinson spent years in solitude and confinement which allowed her creative juices to progress. Overtime, her ideas began appearing on paper as magnificent poems. Love, death, life, hope, weapons, birds, bees, flowers, and gardens are all themes used by Emily Dickinson in her poetry. It is unbelievably stunning that Dickinson gives off such beautiful imagery for someone who rarely left the house. She hasRead MoreThe Two Powerful Poetic Devices - Simile And Metaphor913 Words   |  4 Pagessame thing, and simile and metaphor enables them to do so. Another valuable aspects of these poetic devices is that they also allows various interpretations for readers depending on each reader’s background experiences. Simile and metaphor encourage audiences to use their own experiences and imaginations to come up with diverse interpretations. In the following paragraphs, two poems will be discussed to show how the poets used simile and metaphor to convey their notions; â€Å"Hope† is the thing withRead MoreDickinson’s Poetry Is Startling and Eccentric. Discuss.1223 Words   |  5 PagesDickinson’s poetry is startling and eccentric. Discuss. Perhaps one of the aspects that draw us to the poetry of Dickinson is its eccentricity and startling nature. In her poetry, Emily Dickinson explores a number of different themes including death, hope, nature, pain and love. The trademark signs of a Dickinson poem are her hallmark dashes she uses. Her dashes suggest that there is more to the story than she is writing down. Another characteristic of Dickinson’s poetry is the capitalization ofRead MoreComparison of Whitman and Dickenson Poems856 Words   |  4 Pagespersonality, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman created similar poetry. Dickinson s Hope is a Thing with Feathers and Whitman s O Captain! My Captain! share many qualities. br brHope is a Thing with Feathers and O Captain! My Captain! contain a similar scansion. Both have a predominantly iambic meter. The unaccented beat followed by the accented beat creates a rising meter. Each poem also contains notable exceptions to the iambic meter. In Hope is a Thing with Feathers , the first lineRead MorePsychoanalytic Criticism on Emily Dickinson Essay1086 Words   |  5 Pagespsychological theories. Such approach can be used when trying to reconstruct an author’s position throughout their literary writings, as well as understanding whom the author was and how their mind created such works. When considering the work of Emily Dickinson, psychoanalytic criticism comes into play with the role of explaining the many meanings behind her poetry, as to make the reader relate to such poetry on a deeper level or not to who she was as a human being. Many critics believe that using a