Death and Dickinson

Emily Dickinson is endlessly fascinating, both as a poet and as a human being.  Her unique style of poetry and her reclusive behavior have spawned controversy after controversy for the past hundred years. One thing I find interesting to note is that her poems were barely published while she was alive; in fact, she wished all her papers burned after her death, and it is only because her sister went against her wishes that we are lucky enough to know of Emily Dickinson’s talent.

Dickinson seems obsessed with the dangerously narrow lines between life and death, existence and oblivion, heaven and earth, mortality and eternity.  Ironically, since they are so closely associated now, her poems give the reader almost the exact opposite feeling than does the poetry of Walt Whitman—her hymn-like words echo with thoughts that are dark, lonely, enclosed, oppressive, and introspective, as opposed to his bright, exuberant, lively, and almost bawdy verses.  Reading their poems one after another is nearly an experience of night versus day, or even simply loud versus quiet.

Dickinson often meditates on the interconnectedness of life, death, nature, and religion (and all combinations of these themes) in her poems, and she presents these ideas beautifully by taking a moment in life and then describing a tiny detail or a unique view of the scene, giving the reader a strange perspective, and perhaps, in this way, inviting one to look closer, with fresh eyes and open minds, at everyday life and experiences.

She certainly seems to have done this herself: in her work, she will take note of and describe the smallest essentials of existence—a dust mote, a fly, a shaft of light, frost on a flower—and then use these minutiae to open up the idea of far greater truths; of the fundamental questions of life (and death) itself.  For example, in “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—” Dickinson relates death, the greatest unknown, the last true mystery, to the most negligible everyday occurrence in the room.  In the instance of death, the tiniest sound or movement is amplified and brought to the forefront of awareness as being of the utmost importance.  Everything is portrayed as interconnected in the most vital of ways—everything is part of the web of life.

To me, the most significant aspect of Dickinson’s poetry is her ability to write on such a deep and personal level that it touches a part of the soul that is shared by all of us.  The raw emotions that she is able to portray so vividly—so eloquently—are those with which everyone can relate, which everyone has felt at some time before, and are, therefore, those which possess us and grip our imagination in such a way that only experience and remembrance can.  When Dickinson writes, “Pain—has an Element of Blank— / It cannot recollect / When it begun—or if there were / A time when it was not—” who is not able to relate to those words?  Who is not torn apart by those feelings, by the memory of such a pain that overwhelms all else?  The poem is so simple, and yet so deeply, fundamentally true—it works its way to the very core of the soul, only to find itself already there.

A Violent Outlook is Easy to Find

“A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” by Flannery O’Connor, is a story about a self-righteous woman known as “The Grandmother,” her son Bailey, and his family. None of the characters are made particularly lovable, but they are all believable as they set out on a road trip to Florida for a family vacation. Along the way, partially due to the Grandmother’s senility and obstinacy, the car overturns on a dusty back road, leaving the family injured and stranded. Finding them there is an escaped convict called “The Misfit,” whose gang gradually executes the family members while he and the Grandmother discuss redemption. The story ends after the Misfit shoots and kills the Grandmother, remarking of her attitude for the last moments of her life that “She would of been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”

           

This story portrays the search for God, and represents the Grandmother as a standard Christian woman who believes in her own virtue as much or more than she believes in the power of Christ. What she doesn’t realize is that she is in need of salvation every bit as much as the Misfit is, and only in the last seconds of her life, when she instinctively reaches out to the Misfit in pure love and kindness, does she really know what it means to be saved and thereby gains her standing in God’s graces.

           

O’Connor attempts to show us that being prim and proper does not necessarily make one spiritual, and, conversely, that being spiritual does not exclude one from a life of crime and antipathy. The Misfit, as a polar opposite to the Grandmother, is deeply spiritual but not a believer; he wishes he could believe in his Savior and know that God is going to take care of him in the end, but he cannot bring himself to accept faith, and he therefore surmises that without God, there is no point in compassion. 

           

“A Good Man” does make its point clear to the reader, and in O’Connor’s world, seemingly, there is no other way to get these characters to reveal their true emotions and identities than through violence. I find this hard to believe, however, and am vaguely disturbed that so many people would think it true. Violence does, indeed, alter our attitudes and behaviors, but does it really make known whom we are inside? I propose that possibly mere bad luck, not physical violence, reveals a person’s true character. As Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” Notice that he did not say, “…in times of extreme violence.” In conclusion, I found that the violence in this story merely detracted from the basic concepts that O’Connor was trying to get across, and rather than engaging me in the ideas presented, the grotesqueness of it alienated me from the entire account.

Robert Frost: American Poet

Robert Frost is as beloved an American icon as apple pie, as revered an American figure as Neil Armstrong, and as talented an American poet as Edgar Allen Poe.  Though he may be popular because of the accessibility and seeming simplicity of his poetry, Frost never fails to hold our attention as we peer deeper, owing to the actual complexity and insightfulness he intricately winds into his lyrically mesmerizing poems.  Frost manages to seamlessly blend traditionalist poetic styles and forms with modernist ones, and the result is unforgettable poetry that displays an uncanny ability to be at once personal and universal; immediate and timeless. 

Frost’s poetry can be considered traditional in both its form and its subject matter.  He carefully and meticulously constructed his poems, using rhyme and meter religiously—in fact, he openly opposed the use of free verse—and he wrote about such topics as would seem rooted in transcendentalist thought.  His works consist predominantly of nature poetry, with many links to the transcendentalist theme of spirituality found in and of the natural world—as in the temptation of a nearly attainable great truth or divinity waiting in the mirrored surface of still water, portrayed tauntingly in “For Once, Then, Something.”  He also held a deeply heartfelt and moving appreciation of the beauty to be discovered in small, everyday scenes, items, or occurrences—such as the observation of the eternal loveliness of snow falling gently on dark trees in “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” or the indulgent joy found in spotting a grove of birch trees and imagining childhood pleasures, as affectionately described in “Birches.”  

For all this, Frost was also inarguably a product of the modernist era.  His visually descriptive poems, along with their great respect of natural splendor and consciousness of the divine in the world around us, take on a new, modern twist; he fears, it seems, that the divinity he sees imbuing nature may not care about him—that the powerful forces at work in the universe mightn’t be so benevolent and loving after all…  We can almost see his heartbreaking transition from hopeful to discouraged by noting the difference in tone from the calmly joyous “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” to the desperately frightened and lonely “Desert Places,” written 13 years later.  The unsympathetic “rage” of the ocean in “Once by the Pacific” is a reminder that Mother Earth believes in tough love at best, or even that God may be angry and vengeful still: “There would be more than ocean-water broken / Before God’s Put out the Light was spoken.”  Frost’s uncertainties about the indifference or even existence of a supreme being were typical of the disillusion many modernist artists were facing at the time, and his use of poetry as a response to feelings of isolation, loneliness, and ambiguity was, in itself, a modernist reaction. 

Along with this darker side of Frost’s poetry, his work was modernist in structure and technique, as well.  His experimentation with form, which made wonderful use of blank verse, was international in origin: his poems are reminiscent in tone of Shakespeare’s prose combined with lyric English verse.  He used playfulness and adopted a humorous quality in his work when broaching serious and profound subjects, such as the mental and physical isolation found in the outwardly amusing “Mending Wall.”  And, of course, Frost’s poetry is ceaselessly American in its ringing accolade to freedom—freedom from boundaries, freedom from restraint, and freedom of choice: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by…”  You know the rest—after all, it’s Frost.

Images of Mortality Along "A Worn Path"

“A Worn Path,” by Eudora Welty, follows an ancient black woman on her journey through the cold countryside. Phoenix Jackson makes her painstaking way through dark woods, up steep hills, across streams, through fields, and down a lonely road on her mission to town to get medicine for her ailing grandson. She is met with many obstacles along the way, including thorny bushes that catch and snag her, a loose dog who runs her down, a hunter who admonishes her to return home, and, mostly, her own imagination. When she at last reaches her destination, she receives the medicine for which she came, and without hesitation she turns and begins her long journey back home.

           

On the surface, this is a story of love and devotion, but as we look more carefully at the details of what Phoenix encounters along her journey, we may come to wonder whether this is a story of mortality, or more specifically, illusions of immortality.

           

We can begin with the most obvious connection, Phoenix’s namesake. The character of Phoenix Jackson closely resembles the mythic bird in many ways: she wears a red scarf and has gold skin, which are the traditional colors of a phoenix; her hair is the odor of copper, which smells burnt and acrid; her tapping cane sounds like “a solitary…bird”; and her face is described throughout the story as glowing, illuminated, radiating, and shining, all conjuring images of the fiery bird. She also describes her grandson as a baby bird, and tells the hunter she cannot turn back because she is “bound” to go to town, since “the time [has] come around,” as if she is fulfilling her destiny to complete this cycle.

           

Phoenix’s love of her grandson is the driving force behind her routine journeys into town, but there are clues to suggest that her powerful love has tainted her grasp of reality, and that the mission bringing her to town is stemming from self-delusions. Phoenix is described as “solitary” as she walks, and even given her insistence that her grandson is still living, we can divine from her reactions to other occurrences that he may have died years ago, leaving her, indeed, solitary. For instance, when she rests by the side of the creek, Phoenix imagines that she sees a little boy offering her a piece of cake, but when she reaches for it, the apparition disappears. Just after this, she sees a scarecrow in a field and immediately takes it for a ghost, perhaps another indication that she is almost aware of the futility of her errand. Later, when the nurse asks her about the health of her grandson, Phoenix is confused and struck into a rigid silence for long moments until she regains her foggy and uncertain memory. There are also smaller clues throughout, including the appearance of a mourning dove (at which she comments that it’s “not too late for him”), and a buzzard (where she remarks, “Who you watching?”). 

           

All of this implies that Phoenix is trapped in her cycle of walking this path, and within this cycle she is also somewhere between the recognition of mortality and the delusion of immortality. Until the end comes for her, too, she is compelled to continue this journey again and again out of her powerful love and her equally powerful denial.

           

I found that I had to read this story several times in order to fully gain any real insights on it. Because of the richness of the details and descriptions, it was too much to take in the first time, but I grew more attached to and appreciative of the story each time I read it. With the revelation at the end of the motive for Phoenix to make this journey, I was able to go back and better understand all the foreshadowing that takes place during the bulk of the story. I am amazed at the style and depth of this work of art, and I can only dream that someday I will write anything that may compare.

My Dear "Neighbor Rosicky"

Willa Cather’s Neighbor Rosicky is quite possibly the most beautiful, fulfilling, and moving short story that I have ever had the privilege to read.  Besides the magically perfect and poignantly vivid descriptions of the farmlands and countryside—the High Prairie—of Nebraska that me feel as though I might have looked up from my book at any moment and seen the open fields and softly falling snow, Cather’s impeccable mastery of the subject matter she presents through these characters is profound.  The ideals of a simple country life, of personal freedoms and independence of spirit, and of the longing for a deeper happiness that is unattainable to those too busy working for it to actually discover, are here brought to life in a more eloquent and lyric way than I could ever have possibly imagined. 

Rosicky himself is made so real, so round and fully developed as a thinking, feeling human being (and all in the space of just a few brief pages), that when he speaks I am captivated, when he acts I admire him, when he remembers my heart breaks, and when he dies I feel as though I have just lost my own grandfather.  After finishing the last and most wrenchingly beautiful words on the page, I find myself turning back to the beginning of the story only to be in Rosicky’s company again, or else I lose myself in simply gazing out the window at a willow branch moving slowly and gently as the early evening breeze stirs the air, entranced and sensing a feeling of deep gratification by the simple sight.

           

Neighbor Rosicky is a work of Modernist fiction in many ways and on various levels.  Firstly, it is centered around a poor immigrant farmer—one of the “common people” or minorities (either ethnic, gender, racial, class, or otherwise) who were increasingly at the forefront of Modernist literature as subjects, authors, or intended audience.  Also, the story integrates local and regional dialects, with Rosicky’s urban Bohemian accent even differing slightly from his wife’s country Czech pronunciations: a feat begun by Mark Twain’s groundbreaking Huckleberry Finn and, although certainly difficult to accomplish, making a strong impact in Modernist works.  Finally, Neighbor Rosicky encompasses the grand themes of simplicity, nature, spirit, determination, and freedom that began in American literature in earnest with Emerson and Thoreau and the Transcendentalists, and which were carried on with much enthusiasm and renewed vigor by the Modernists.

           

As the editors of the Harper Single Volume American Literature say of Modernist writers’ contributions to the magazines of the day, one could also say of Willa Cather on her work in this story: “[She] examined the consequences of the quickened pace of urban life and the flood of modern technological inventions on the moods of people and on the landscape.”  I believe that statement summarizes the essence, if not the magnitude, of Neighbor Rosicky.

Huck Finn: The Original All-American

In my freshman English course on American Literature, I was truly devastated to learn that we would have only a single week in which to read and absorb the beautiful intricacies of one of my favorite authors, Mark Twain, and, in my opinion, the epitome of American Literature, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  This amazing piece of work is absolutely American in that it could never have come about in any country but the United States, with any influence other than the South, or under any better authorship than that of Mark Twain.  If asked to name an American book, I think that this would be the first one to come to my mind.

Twain, much as Dickinson and Whitman did with poetry, broke all the rules of prose.  He turned the world of American Literature on its head by letting his characters tell the story themselves, in their own words, with their own dialects, providing their own points of view, which were colored by their own values and morals, and all without explanation or remorse.  Twain resists the temptation to narrate or provide any excuses for what he writes, even though—if taken at face value—the tale can be extremely controversial.  He simply lets the story unfold by depicting it without embellishment, and lets the reader do the rest. 

And that depiction is truly incredible: every single thing that Huck encounters in his adventures along the river, he obediently describes with perfect accuracy, giving us a sense of Twain’s deep knowledge and understanding of his setting for this story.  Because of the ease with which Huck portrays his surroundings, we can easily see in our imaginations the two runaways rafting along the Mississippi, coming across small river outposts, meeting the various characters in a Southern “backwoods” society, and so on.  We are whisked away to another time and place, and completely immersed there in every detail: the language, the morals, the landscape, the philosophies, the relationships—everything is there, perfectly reconstructed, and we are lost within that world.

Although Huck faithfully describes the events and interactions in his journey, he actually understands very little of what is going on around him.  In another masterfully executed element of his writing, Twain manages to give us the most profound wisdom “out of the mouths of babes.”  He depends heavily on the use of irony to get his messages across to the reader.  When Huck speaks perfectly innocently and without comprehension about some of the most atrocious and unspeakable acts that Americans have ever committed, we are not meant to believe that Huck (or Twain himself) is a racist, a bigot, or a white supremacist!  Rather, it is intended to challenge the reader; to make us question what we take for granted or what we let slip by without taking issue, and to open our eyes as to whether this prejudice is really all in the past, or if it is still around us, going unnoticed, avoided, or ignored.