“If You Were Coming in the Fall” is a fascinating poem written by Emily Dickinson around the 1860’s. Many images and messages are skillfully woven in this classic piece of literature. Throughout the poem, Emily Dickinson employs an abundance of figurative language to create an image of a woman desperately waiting for her lover’s return. To better understand the poem, it would behoove one to first understand the author. Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts and had an introverted personality. She rarely left the vicinity of her home and very few people visited her. However, despite not having many guests, every person that visited her impacted her life. Some of her visitors were men and, needless to say, she …show more content…
This imagery paints a clear picture of someone who is desperately waiting for time to pass, and it conveys the experience in a way that is understandable for the audience. In addition to the use of imagery, the author also employs copious amounts similes. For instance, in the last two lines of her poem, Dickinson pens: “It goads me like the Goblin Bee,/ That will not state its …show more content…
(13-16)
When paraphrased, the stanza above states that if the speaker is certain that she and her lover can be reunited again after death, she would enthusiastically take her own life knowing that her lover is waiting on the other side. By saying so, the speaker is considering life worthless if she cannot meet her lover. What many people call the “most valuable gift” is considered to be of no value in the eyes of the speaker if she cannot spend it with the one she loves. In addition to that statement, the author writes in stanza 3: If only centuries delayed, I’d count them on my hand, Subtracting till my fingers dropped Into Van Diemen’s land.
If the speaker knows for sure that she could see her lover again, she would be willing to wait for years, decades, and even centuries if she knew for sure that they would meet. Based on the text, the speaker only wishes to have a confirmation that their reunion will be certain. What happens between now and the moment they meet will not be of any significance. Moreover, the speaker states that she would willingly endure anything in order to have that confirmation, even death. Altogether, these two stanzas direct the reader to the overall theme of the
The author uses imagery in the poem to enable the reader to see what the speaker sees. For example, in lines 4-11 the speaker describes to us the
The use of imagery in this poem creates a vivid image of each description that leaves the reader feeling connected to the author in unprecedented way. Even if you’re not a middle aged woman waiting for her daughter to come from from college, you still understand. This is because the author has used
The second stanza of the poem takes a shift. He urges that they are to die soon and that life is too short while death is forever. In lines 27 to 28, the speaker scares her by saying worms will try to take her virginity if she doesn't sleep with him now. As for the third stanza, the speaker is simplifying what is going to happen when she dies, so why not use up her precious time now?
Death is the major speaker of this poem, its persona shows how cruel and violent it can be, however she also speaks of getting everything out of life you can before death. Starting with line twenty three of the poem she begins talking about living a full life before death, "When it 's over, I want to say all my life/I was a bride married to amazement/I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms." (23-25). Being a bride married to amazement is a comparison to commitment, being with the same person every day. However in this case with a lifestyle instead. Doing amazing and memorable things every possible day you can, not letting life pass you by. This also fits perfectly with the next few lines
She hears a fly buzzing, an onomatopoeia, and through similes in line three and four she compares stillness in the room to “like the Stillness of the Air—Between Heaves of Storms.” The dynamic between the buzzing fly, hovering around the room signifying her death, and the tension of the room sets up the gravity of her situation. In the second stanza Dickinson uses synecdoche to illustrate the people around her mourning her death. She uses “eyes” and “breaths” as the main subject of the sentence. An interpretation of this is to blur the explicit mention of people and instead focus again on the senses or visual and auditory imagery.
Separation from loved ones can be the hardest thing ever, as depicted time and time again in my life and I’m sure yours. A long-distance relationship illustrated by Emily Dickinson in the poem “If You Were Coming in the Fall” is difficult and she shows that in a few stanzas. She expresses the agony through literary devices, sophisticated diction, and the time change in the last stanza. Love is the cause of the most happiness and most emotional pain in the world, a long-distance relationship can only add to those emotions. Literary devices can make or break a poem and its meaning to the reader, this poem is wonderfully constructed and demonstrates that perfectly.
This is symbolic of her looking at death as a new beginning as opposed to a sad ending. There is a feeling of disappointment as she thinks that she is going towards eternity but she just ends up viewing the “House that Seemed a Swelling of the Ground” and then centuries later, reflects upon her journey towards and eternity she didn’t witness. To Dickinson death was not something to be afraid of but to rather embrace and accept because it was inevitable, yet as in her life ends up disappointed because death leads to nothingness.
“If You Were Coming in the Fall”, is a poem written by Emily Dickinson. Emily Dickinson wrote a a lot about love. Dickinson fell in love with an unknown person when she was in her early twenties. Unfortunately, Edward Dickinson did not approve of Emily's unknown lover. Later on in Dickinson's life, she began to fall in love with a man named Otis Lord. Dickinson and Lord wrote each other constantly. Dickinson refused Lord's marriage proposal, but they continued to write to each other. Emily Dickinson's, “If You Were Coming in the Fall”, portrays a theme of love and time, a tone of distress, and a certain purpose.
Have you lost someone close to you in your life? It is difficult to deal with and my group and I read the poem “If You Were Coming in the Fall” be Emily Dickinson. The poem talks about a person talking about waiting for someone. During Dickinson’s life she lost many loved ones like family, close friends and her professor. This fact is relevant to the poem because the poem could be talking about meeting her loved ones again in the not so near future. After reading the poem I believe that the theme to “If You Were Coming in the Fall” by Emily Dickinson, is that when a person loses someone, the waiting will make them desperate to see that person again.
You Were Coming in the fall”. The poem is written by a woman named Emily Dickinson who studied in Amherst and Mount Holyoke female seminary, and made 1,800 poems in her life. THe poem is about someone who constantly waits for some else.Throughout her life, Emily Dickinson had lost many friends, family members and professors along the way due to illnesses such as cancer. I believe that the theme is people wait anxiously for an eternity for someone who may never return. The reason I believe that is the theme is because of how many important people that influenced her have passed away, and that she is constantly waiting for someone to help her in her time of
There are many thought provoking literary works in the world. One that seems to fascinate most is Emily Dickinson’s, “If you were coming in the fall.” The title is the same as the first line, “IF you were coming in the fall”; however, line one in the poem puts more emphasis on the word “IF.” Whereas, the title only capitalizes the first letter. During line two and three the poem reads, “I’d brush the summer by/With half a smile and half a spurn” (Dickinson, 2-3), which alludes to the speaker being torn between two conflicting beliefs. On one hand, the speaker is slightly optimistic, but on the other he or she is contempt on the thought or action. The fourth line of the stanza, “As housewives do a fly” (2), implies the writer may in fact be a woman because the reference is to the actions of a housewife. As the second stanza enters with, “If I could see you in a year” (5) it throws
In Dickinson’s poem, “Because I could not stop for Death,” there is much impression in the tone, in symbols, and in the use of imagery that exudes creativity. One might undoubtedly agree to an eerie, haunting, if not frightening, tone in Dickinson’s poem. Dickinson uses controlling adjectives—“slowly” and “passed”—to create a tone that seems rather placid. For example, “We slowly drove—He knew no haste / …We passed the School … / We passed the Setting Sun—,” sets a slow, quiet, calm, and dreamy atmosphere (5, 9, 11,
(14, 18). During this poem, Dickinson wants us to simply see her version of a person's trip during death. The imagery is supposed to lead us into seeing what the author is describing.
Emily Dickinson a modern romantic writer, whose poems considered imaginative and natural, but also dark as she uses death as the main theme many times in her writings. She made the death look natural and painless since she wanted the reader to look for what after death and not be stuck in that single moment. In her poems imagination play a big role as it sets the ground for everything to unfold in a magical way. The speakers in Dickinson’s poetry, are sharp-sighted observers who see the inescapable limitations of their societies as well as their imagined and imaginable escapes. To make the abstract tangible, to define meaning without confining it, to inhabit a house that never became a prison, Dickinson created in her writing a distinctively elliptical language for expressing what was possible but not yet realized. She turned increasingly to this style that came to define her writing. The poems are rich in aphorism and dense
The language in this last stanza differs from the previous ones. In the beginning of the poem, Dickinson uses concrete imagery; however, she ends the poem with the process of dying and uses abstract language. This is a notable remark in the poem because it stresses the point of uncertainty in the experience of death. The speaker only guesses that they are heading towards eternity because nobody is really sure of what life after death is like. Although this stanza has a curious tone, the audience does not get a sense of fear when reading it; instead, it seems as if the narrator is comfortable with wherever she is going.