Sample Student Research Project 2016: Essay
LITR
4328 American Renaissance / Model Assignments
Sample Student Research Project 2016:
Essay
Tyanna Beverly
11/20/2016
The Enigmatic Last Onset of Emily Dickinson
The
subject of death is present in many poems by Emily Dickinson and is largely left
as an unexplained and perplexing natural mystery.
In “I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain” and “I heard a Fly Buzz – when I
died,” the voice of the poem appears to be directly enduring death and, in both
cases, leaves the ending of life and the works unanswered.
In this essay, I will examine these two poems by Emily Dickinson that
seemingly fail to comply with the notion of transcendence or religious salvation
as the poet endeavors to make sense of the mysterious inevitability of death.
It is difficult to label Dickinson as a religious, spiritual or secular
writer; her poems vary with her consciously human attempt to make sense of the
unknown. However, even in these
poems that lack an evident deliverance to a conscious world after death, they
are left open to the possibility of more, something else that may be outside the
human ability to comprehend.
Both poems are written in first-person in a spectral voice of one who has
already passed away, making it a personal account of her attempt to explain the
inexplicable. In “I heard a Fly
Buzz – when I died,” it begins at the end and works backwards up to her final
moments. The speaker uses a simile
to explain the stillness of the room before the buzzing of the fly as being like
the calm “Between the Heaves of Storm.”
This already seems to project the poem into a realm of negativity, as the
silence comes between the destructive natural occurrences of storms.
These heaves of storm are then explained as the sounds of mourning from
“The Eyes around” that have become “dry.”
Unlike in “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” where the people leading the
dead to the grave are at least acknowledged as mourners, the use of sound and
disembodied eyes are all that explain the beings that surround the deathbed of
the speaker. The “Eyes” have
finished grieving and await “that last Onset” when a holy figure is expected to
appear and take the soul of the dead.
This line, however, is paradoxical and sounds aggressive; it is
essentially the last beginning which would signify a life after death. However
the use of the word “onset” to describe this possibility sounds militant,
especially when one reads “King” as the figure that is coming to claim her,
instead of a more pleasant term, like “Father.”
Glenn
Hughes claims in his article “Love, Terror, and Transcendence in Emily
Dickinson’s Poetry” that Dickinson “acknowledges and accepts a truth of
transcendence” even in her most anguished poems when she experiences Christian
fears of a vengeful or unknown holy figure (Hughes 285, 287).
He argues that, although Dickinson rejected “the Calvinist-based theology”
of her time, it is still “the Christian vision that provides the
metaphysical framework for Dickinson’s understanding of human beings, nature,
and the cosmos” (283, 284). I can
see that her use of “King” signifies a possible divine being, and she uses the
mourners to show the expectation that many Christians hope for beside a
death-bed; however, there is no witnessing of a King but rather an interjecting
fly, a common creature found around the recently deceased.
Since the dead no longer breathe, it is likely only the mourners who are
holding their breath in expectation of a holy figure, which agrees with Hughes's
claim that Dickinson used Christian symbols to understand her fellow humans.
However, the poem separates the living from the dead in more ways than one; it
does not allow the dead to see or show anticipation for salvation, it leaves the
dead left without sight. It is the
sound of the fly that is interposed between “the light” and her; it is never
visually witnessed by the speaker and we are left to guess if it is witnessed by
the “Eyes” that surround her. The
audible overcomes her sense of sight and apparently soon after, her life.
Using the image of the fly is disturbing in the sense that it represents
a strong association with decay and physical death.
This gloomy object of death is obstructing “the light,” the possibility
of a spiritual afterlife. However,
this also shows a known reality of death and one that Transcendentalists may
claim as an association with nature.
When a body dies it becomes something to other, lesser creatures that
continue to live off of the physical remains of the dead; the body itself is
infused with nature. The speaker
claims that they have “Signed away / What portions of [them] be / Assignable,”
which gives way to the unassignable body of the dead that is to be claimed by
the fly. The body is made to
eventually expire and the loss of light that comes from the intervention of the
fly does hint at this reality being the only reality; however, it is essentially
simply the only reality any living person can claim to fully understand.
The end of the poem is where the first complete rhyme takes place between
“me” and “see,” it brings a sense of closure but is yet disrupted by the ending
dash that signals the possibility of more to come.
Wendy Martin’s chapter “’A Riddle, at the last’: death and immortality”
claims that “there is no gentle passage into death, only an abrupt, awkward, and
isolating end that seems as ‘uncertain’ and ‘stumbling’ as the flight of the
fly” (Martin 103); however, I would argue that the poem does not necessarily end
due to the lack of final punctuation.
The dash at the end signals a loss of ability to explain the experience
of death further but does claim that there is no additional experience; it
appears to be left open.
While
Martin argues that Dickinson does not attempt to “clarify death but to explore
its silence, mystery and unknowability” (Martin 97), Michael Clune explores how
Dickinson does attempt to explain death in his article “How Poems Know What It’s
Like to Die.” He focuses on her use
of absorbed listening in “I heard a Fly Buzz – when I died” which he claims
“gives access to an experience in which the self is not present,” a loss of
consciousness that Dickinson associates with the loss of life (Clune 635).
Clune realizes that the very existence of the poem, along with its
first-person narration seems to disqualify this loss of experience; however, he
insists that Dickinson’s purpose is not to convince the reader that the subject
of the poem is dead but “to create a convincing experiential analogue for death”
(635). Clune explains the
experience of being lost in music and being returned to oneself after the music
ends and then questions where the consciousness would be if the music had never
ended (642). This sound is what
comes between Dickinson’s sight of a possible life after death as a “Blue –
uncertain – stumbling Buzz,” the image of the fly is disguised in sound just as
the image of the mourners are reduced to “Eyes” and “Breaths.”
Clune states that “the poem’s final lines represent an experience, but
the experience is in an important sense not the speaker’s experience,” since
there is no continuation of sense or indication of a survival of self by the end
of the poem (636). The ending line
“I could not see to see –” suggests that the speaker could not literally “see”
but also that they could not understand.
The “Windows failed” leading up to this loss of sight but the blindness
also appears to hint towards a spiritual blindness.
The “Windows” could simultaneously represent the literal eyes of the
speaker and also the eyes of the soul, it leads to an inability to understand
the human world as well as the ethereal world.
However, as Clune argues that the experience is a psychological end that
does not record “experiences after
the experience of absorbed listening” (637) it still leaves open the possibility
of the unknown metaphysical experience that the dead can never speak about.
Just
as both poems end openly in a dash, they also share a use of cynical imagery
with nature and other human beings that seem to indicate the inability of the
living to understand the emotions of the dead.
In the poem “I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” there is likewise the
presence of mourners but their descriptions are lacking as they are described
primarily as sounds or body parts.
They do not have individual identities; they are rather grouped as “Mourners”
with the “same Boots of Lead.” This
situates them in a position of knowledge and leadership, as the mourners know
why they are mourning while the speaker merely “seemed / That Sense was breaking
through” as they are leading her to the grave.
The “Boots of Lead” also indicate the heavy prospects of the living that
remain to carry out the burying of the dead; they are still weighed down to the
earth by their own mortality and will similarly end up inside the earth
eventually as well. The “treading –
treading” of the mourners recall images of military marches, and when they are
seated “A Service, like a Drum” causes the speaker to think her mind is “going
numb.” This reflects back to
Clune’s article, where he claims that “visual experience reminds [him] of
psychological continuity; in other words, it reminds [him] of [his] self” in
response to Dickinson’s reasoning behind using sound to explain the experience
of death (Clune 641); however, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” does not end with
sound but with silence. These
incomplete figures that appear in these poems seem generally harsh to the dead;
they do not instill a sense of peace. However, it shows that the living are as
unlikely to console the dead as the dead are able to console the living.
The loss of sound and sight are both used in Dickinson’s poems because
death is generally considered to derive from a loss of one’s senses.
The self of the poem is already reduced
in the beginning to being inside her “Brain”; however, unlike in “I heard a Fly
Buzz – when I died,” she uses the absence of sound as the lead-up to death in
this instance, although in an enigmatic way.
The sound of the “Service” causes the numbing of her mind but she then
hears the mourners “lift a Box / And creak across [her] Soul” as they are likely
now walking over her grave and “Then Space – began to toll.”
Space is generally thought to be a quiet place, and presumably the space
inside a grave would be as well, but the dead subject hears the sound of
“tolling” in this deceptive silence.
She claims that “the Heavens were
a Bell,” but it is not the Heavens that are tolling for her now, but apparently
silence itself. She is no longer a
“Being” that is created to hear only the tolling of Heavens, for she does not
associate herself as an “Ear” but on the same sphere as “Silence, some strange
Race.” Martin claims that “at
death, ‘Being’ may become an ‘Ear,’ but it has no voice to tell what it hears”
(Martin 104), however it seems that Dickinson is not only unable to speak but
also unable to hear. The speaker
does not use words to explain further senses of sight or hearing, and she does not
explain the “here” that she has found herself in just as she does not explain
the multiple worlds she falls into when her reason fails.
She uses the idea of Heavens to explain what those still living hear
about death, when they are “Ears” that are able and meant to hear such things.
As Hughes claims, it is “because the conscious self is, experientially, a
finite and severely limited participation in a boundlessness of transcendent
meaning mysteriously cognate with the self, it can know itself, and have control
over itself, only very incompletely” (Hughes 290). The living are able to paint
pictures of paradise and salvation, but the dead are supposed to be experiencing
what the living are not able to imagine.
The ending is all action as she
drops and hits and plunges until she is “Finished knowing – then –” perhaps
after all the planks in Reason have broken.
Her fall begins with a broken plank of reason but the subject is still
supposedly perceptive of at least the sense of falling during this time for it
is only in the end that she finishes knowing, suggesting that she breaks
additionally in her reason as she continues to fall and “hit a World, at every
plunge.” With every world she hits,
she loses her ability to make sense of her situation until she claims that her
ability to know in general is finished.
However, this again seems to point more to the troubling association with
the inability to describe the indescribable.
If the speaker is dead, they would not be able to explain their death to
the audience, and although this appears to be the case in both poems, it is
still an imaginatively human attempt to uncover the mystery of death.
This is also shown in the troubled ending of “ – then – ” that leaves
open the expectation of another line and experience but does not give any.
While this signifies the loss of the speaker’s ability to know and
describe, however, it still does not completely end the poem.
The possibility for more to come is left in the realm of the unknown but
the unknown itself is not treated as the conclusion.
While scholars have attempted to uncover the unknown realms that Emily
Dickinson often endeavored to tread in her poetry, her spiritual beliefs are
still primarily held to be a mystery that she purposely kept this way.
Her views shift with paradoxes and often lead readers into a cyclical
struggle that never settles the questions she leaves open but rather works to
create new questions. There is
appropriately no final punctuation in either of these two poems, just as there
is no final answer to the question of an afterlife or the experiences of the
dead. The ending dashes abruptly
end the speaker’s life and poems simultaneously, but they leave a feeling that
there could be something more that is
unable to be communicated further.
This possibility is left open despite the dark imagery that is woven into the
works, creating a human attempt to understand the terrifying and yet common
phenomenon of death.
Works
Cited:
Dickinson, Emily. “I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain.”
Poetry Foundation.
1983. Web. 18 November 2016.
Dickinson, Emily. “I Heard a Fly Buzz – when I died.”
Poetry Foundation. 1999. Web. 18
November 2016.
Clune, Michael W. “How Poems Know
What It’s Like To Die.” ELH, vol. 83,
no. 2, 2016, pp. 633-654.
Hughes, Glenn. “Love, Terror, And Transcendence in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry.”
Renascence, vol. 66, no. 4, 2014, pp.
283-304.
Martin, Wendy. The Cambridge Introduction
to Emily Dickinson. Cambridge University Press, 2007. Print.
"Great Star" flag of pre-Civil War USA