Emily Dickinson- Ainsley & Melissa

Emily Dickinson had a passion for nature. It served as the muse for a lot of her work. In “Bring Me the Sunset in a Cup”, Emily Dickinson describes her excitement when waking up on a dew covered morning. She uses a very cheery tone for the rhythm of the poem which shows the readers how positively she feels for the time of day. The rhythm of a poem can have a huge impact on the story because the reader is given a emotion without the author straight up telling them the feeling in the poem. It is a literary tool that enhances the poetry and the mood of the story. Just as one would want to know more about their idol or passion, Dickinson has questions about nature. She strives to learn more about her muse and is quick to show her curiosity over the topic. She asks, “Who leads the docile spheres withes of supple blue?” (Dickinson).
Another commonly used literary technique in “Bring Me the Sunset in a Cup” was imagery. Her words are so beautifully described that they allow the reader to picture what is taking place in the poem. In line twelve, Dickinson says, “How many trips the tortoise makes, How many cups the bee partakes” (Dickinson). The reader can picture these creatures, and ultimately get the feeling of spring. Both are outdoor animals that come out in warm weather conditions. The reader can also imagine the slow moving tortoise and hear the buzzing of the bee. Dickinson uses imagery to point out the time of day because the story sets in the morning and dawns at the end of the day. She says, “Bring me the sunset in a cup, Reckon the morning’s flagons up” (Dickinson). The comparison of a ‘sunset in a cup’ refers to the coffee that most drink in the morning, and the raising of the flag is also a job for the early morning. To inform the reader that the day is coming to a close, Dickinson says, “And shut the windows down so close, My spirit cannot see? Who’ll let me out some gala day, With implements to fly away” (Dickinson). The closing of the windows shows how the residents are in for the night. She includes her want to be free from the enclosed house, showing once again her love for the great outdoors. The greatest part of the chronological imagery is that Dickinson used items that one might not necessarily consider when thinking of a specific time of day. Raising the flag is a brilliant way to describe the morning, but it’s not what first come to mind. The closing of windows gives readers a wonderful picture to imagine. One that they probably hadn’t considered with night time before. This clever technique of hinting to the reader the time of day by using hidden imagery is what makes Emily Dickinson such a great artist of her craft. She didn’t have to state on paper every point, and instead she allowed her audience to read between the lines.

Dickinson, Emily. “Give Me the Sunset in a Cup”. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Boston: Little, Brown, 1924; Bartleby.com, 2000.

Walt Whitman's writing style

In the literary criticism I read titled "Mr. Walt Whitman" by Henry James, I did not get the impression from the beginning of the passage that the author was very fond of Walt Whitman.  He uses the word "melancholy" (James) to describe his writing style more than once.  In this particular criticism, Henry James is talking about Drum-Taps by Walt Whitman.  I have not read Drum-Taps and I never really plan on reading it, but if I was just some innocent reader who stumbled upon this literary criticism by Henry James, I honestly think I would make an effort to not read it.  Henry James believes that this work by Walt Whitman is "offensive against art" (James).  Drum-Taps takes place during the Civil War, and he thought that it was artistically safe.  Part of the passage is told from an unknown narrator and is not the words of Henry James.  The narrator describes the writing style of Walt Whitman as "prosaic" and "eclectic" (James), neither of which I fully understand the meaning of.  According to Dictionary.com, the definition of the word "eclectic" is "not following any one system...but selecting and using what are considered the best elements of all systems" (Dictionary.com).  I am already starting to like Walt Whitman because I think he and I think the same way.  Why only stick to one idea or way when there are so many others out there to consider?  It is not even just ideas, but just a general open-mindedness I guess.  The word "prosaic" means "of or having the character or form of prose rather than poetry" (Dictionary.com).  This makes sense now.  Obviously, Henry James felt like Walt Whitman was just telling a lame story about what was going on during the Civil War instead of using his poetic creativity to give the reader a better image.  To me, this does not seem very fair.  First of all, the Civil War was not a pretty place to be in.  How poetic can someone possibly get when men are dying and bleeding and freaking out all around you?  Maybe Henry James was offended because Walt Whitman's lack of proper portrayal (in the eyes of Henry James, not me!  I am totally neutral on this!) did not give the justice that the War deserved.  Just because it does not go into gory details does not mean it was a bad piece of work!  Maybe it was just boring or something!  I feel like this would have been a lot easier to talk about if I had read Drum-Taps by Walt Whitman, but I can say that I do know a lot about the Civil War thanks to AP US History.  From what I can tell from reading the literary criticism, I think that Walt Whitman's writing style must have been fairly serious.  Serious writings are more likely to be considered boring, and when people are bored they are more likely to be angry.  Henry James was probably upset he wasted his time reading something he did not enjoy.

James, Henry. "Mr. Walt Whitman." The Nation, November 16, 1865: 626. Quoted as "Mr. Walt Whitman" in Bloom, Harold, ed. Walt Whitman, Classic Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2007. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.

"Eclectic." Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com. Web. 20 Mar. 2012.

"Prosaic." Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com. Web. 20 Mar. 2012.

Emily Dickinson's writing style

In the literary criticism that I read about Emily Dickinson, the main focus was on the dash that she makes periodically in her writings.  Although this may not fully explain the writing style of Emily Dickinson, I think it is an important enough--and interesting enough--piece that makes her so different from everyone else.  The reasoning behind these "unutterable words" (Fagan) can probably be linked to the meanings of her poems.  As Deirdre Fagan describes it, these dashes in Emily Dickinson's writings are "physical manifestations of thoughts...a thread between the sayable and the unsayable..." (Fagan).  He believes that Emily Dickinson purposely placed these dashes in her writings to break the thought of the reader, as well as show how her own thoughts might have been broken as she was writing.  If this is true, I think it is very interesting how she would think to literally portray every single little thing that was going on in her head.  It was probably done so that the reader could feel a connection of some sort to the writer, as if they could see their thoughts or think the same thoughts (which sounds a lot creepier than what I wanted it to, and for that I am sorry).  The dashes are used to "disrupt the thought pattern of the reader" (Fagan).  I do not know much about the life of Emily Dickinson--actually, I really know nothing at all--but I feel like if she was intentionally writing the dashes as strategically as they seem, her own thoughts may have been disrupted on a daily basis.  The only think I can come up with is if she had a bad home life or she was so creative that her brain was just too crowded with thoughts.  I think that happens to extremely smart or creative people.  But, in the literary criticism, Judith Farr said that she believed the "dash was the most used and abused punctuation in the Victorian Era" (Fagan).  So maybe these dashes were not as strategic or creative as I thought they were...it was just popular at the time and I am sure she was just going along with what all the other cool writers were doing.  The style of the dashes are also looked at, meaning how they appear on paper.  Because the dashes were not all exactly the same (which seems very impossible to me because no part of the handwritten language is perfect), it is possible that each dash has its own individual meaning or purpose.  To me, that seems quite unlikely.  It is impossible for ninety-nine percent of the world's population to make their letters literally exactly the same every single time they write, let alone simple dashes and marks.  I think the thing that intrigued me the most was reading how the dash was the most used character--including words--in all of her writings (Fagan).  Maybe she was just trying to have a trademark, was following the trends of the time or simply expressing her thoughts in detail, I think Emily Dickinson definitely did a good job at leaving her mark on the world...literally.


Fagan, Deirdre. "Emily Dickinson's Unutterable Word." Emily Dickinson Journal 14, no. 2 (Fall 2005): 70–75. Quoted as "Emily Dickinson's Unutterable Word" in Bloom, Harold, ed. Emily Dickinson, New Edition, Bloom's Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2008. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.

Reflection- "To Build A Fire"

For this reflection, we were supposed to read "To Build a Fire" by Jack London.  I just want to start off by saying reading this passage made me feel very cold.  That actually may be a good thing, because that means that Jack London was using a lot of good imagery and descriptions to make the reader literally feel what is going on.  It could just be cold in this room, but I thought it would make that point.  The story takes place in the Yukon,  and it is about a man and his dog who are traveling through the snow.  It is extremely cold--an amazing seventy-five degrees before zero (Glencoe Literature).  It is so cold, in fact, that the breath of both the animal and the man are literally freezing to their faces.  The man is also chewing tobacco, and this nasty spit is freezing onto his beard.  The man at first comes off as optimistic about the journey, believing that everything is okay and he will soon make it out of the extreme cold in no time.  I think he was just trying to self-motivate himself because pretty soon, he realizes he needs to start a fire and get warm if he really wants to survive.  The rest of this story makes me really sad.  The man tries his best to start a fire because he knows it will save him, but he can not keep the flame going.  "The experience was a fear such as he had never known in his life" (Glencoe Literature).  In the end, the man can never get the fire he needs going and he ends up dying.  Is that not such a horrible ending?  Jack London was a naturalist though, meaning he wrote a lot about nature and a person's relationship with nature.  This is very similar to the philosophies of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Both of these writers were transcendentalists and naturalists, and they sought solitude in nature to achieve the life they believed people needed to live.

Wilhelm, Jeffrey D., Douglas Fisher, Beverly Ann. Chin, and Jacqueline Jones. Royster. Glencoe Literature. New York: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2009. Print.

Reflection- "The Darling"

For this reflection, we were supposed to read "The Darling" by Anton Chekhov.  The story starts out by talking about a young girl named Olenka.  All the people around her say that she is "such a darling" (Glencoe Literature) because of how pretty she is.  She fell in love with a man named Snookin (not to be confused with Jersey Shore's Snooki), a man who owns a theatre and gets very upset when it rains because it is ruining his business.  I felt kind of bad for Snookin at this point because it rained on their wedding day and wedding night.  How can you enjoy the best day of your life when you hate rain so much! They seem to be living happily, until one day before Easter Olenka received a telegram that her husband had died (Glencoe Literature).  Olenka was extremely sad and mourned for three months until another man came along.  He was in the lumber or timber business, and Olenka took on the role of being in the timber business as if she had never been married before (Glencoe Literature).  When her friends would suggest that she should go to the theater because she and her husband were always working, she replied by saying "Me and Vasya have no time for theaters...we are working folk, we can't be bothered with trifles" (Glencoe Literature).  Olenka, so far in the story, seems like the type of woman who does exactly what her boyfriend or husband tells her what to do.  What happened to being your own person, girl?!  Pretty soon, her second husband is dead and she already has another one within a few months.  Again, she conformed to his life as if she had lived it her whole entire life (Glencoe Literature).  As of right now, I am not really sure how "The Darling" can relate to the ideas of Emerson and Thoreau.  It may be because she was so dependent on her husbands, and Emerson and Thoreau felt very strongly about living independently.

Wilhelm, Jeffrey D., Douglas Fisher, Beverly Ann. Chin, and Jacqueline Jones. Royster. Glencoe Literature. New York: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2009. Print.

Reflection- Chief Joseph

 For this reflection, we were supposed to read "I Will Fight No More Forever," a speech made my Chief Joesph.  Reading this speech, my heart broke for Chief Joseph, as well as the other Indians.  His speech was basically begging for peace.  He describes his heart as being "sick and sad" (Chief Joseph).  I was really happy that I found the website that had his speech, because right under the speech of Chief Joseph there was a little part that gave background information about why he was giving this speech.  I think that was when I really started getting sad for Chief Joseph (and plus, we just went over this stuff in AP US History, so I feel like I am some sort of expert on this time period).  As Americans--Americans being the white man--started moving west, they were taking the land that belonged to the Indians.  They did not even ask for or attempt to purchase or compromise for the land.  The Americans completely annihilated the Indians if they refused to move on to the reservations the white men made.  The reservations were on extremely undesirable land.  Anyway, Chief Joseph's tribe was located in Oregon (Chief Joseph).  Instead of moving to the reservations like the white men were trying to get them to do, Chief Joseph wanted to move his tribe to Canada.  This obviously made the white men mad because they were not doing what they were told, like they were "supposed" to.  I felt really bad for Chief Joseph because he was just trying to avoid conflict and keep his people happy.  There was no reason that the white people should have controlled what the Native American's did.  I think that is how Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau felt about the government.  They did not mind so much that is was there, like the Indians just accepted the white men were there, but they did not think they belonged all up in there business.

"Chief Joseph." Welcome to Georgia State University. Web. 05 Mar. 2012.

Reflection- Spoon River Anthology

For this reflection, we were free to pick whatever excerpts from the Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters and compare them to the ideas and philosophies of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.  The first excerpt I picked titled "The Unknown" on page 124.  In this poem or passage, or whatever you want to call it, it is about a man (the unknown) who shoots a hawk in the forest.  "Ye aspiring ones, listen to the story of the unknown/ Who lies here with no stone to mark the place" (Masters 124).  By describing that there is no gravestone where he is buried, it kind of gives the reader supporting information on how the man was considered unknown.  When he shoots the bird, it does not die, but instead it has a broken wing.  The man takes the hawk home and puts it in a cage.  "Daily I search the realms of Hades/ For the soul of the hawk,/ That I may offer him think friendship/ Of one whom life wounded and caged" (Masters 124).  The man talks about how the hawk is very angry at him, and he wants to be friends with him.  If he shot him and broke his wing, why would he go to Hades (I am assuming Hell) to find his soul so they can be friends?  The hawk obviously hates him.  I mean, a strange unknown man ruined his life and threw him in a cage.  Birds are supposed to be free to fly wherever they want!  Surprising enough, I think I found ways to link this to the philosophies of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Neither Thoreau nor Emerson thought that the government should have a huge role in someone's life.  Maybe the man could be considered the government in a sense.  He took away the hawks freedom to fly--the hawk being normal people I guess--and threw him in a cage, and then tried to be friends with him.  Nothing. Makes. Sense.


Masters, Edgar Lee, and John E. Hallwas. Spoon River Anthology. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1992. Print.