After Great Pain A Formal Feeling Comes - Example Essay #3

“This is the Hour of Lead”

Discuss the ways in which Dickinson presents intense emotion in “After great pain, a formal feeling comes”

Throughout Dickinson’s collection of poems we see how she is constantly feeling intense emotions, where this is intense fear, like in “I heard a fly buzz,” in which we see how her fear of the fly is all consuming, which is reflected in the structure of the poem. We then see her intense joy and sense of belonging in, “My life had stood a loaded gun,” In which we see how she feels a sense of satisfaction in the knowing that she is protecting the gentleman in the poem, but the poem in which we most clearly see her over whelming emotions is in “After a great pain a formal feeling comes--“ In this particular poem we see how she feels many different emotions, which include her fear of the recurring pain within her life, which takes form in this poem as a headache. We see how she is terrified of this pain and how her life is almost like a merry-go-round that she is stuck on, and every time she passes the pain it will only be a matter of time before it comes again, and the only way for her to break this vicious cycle is death.

The central cycle of “After great pain, a formal feeling comes” is that of the intense pain Dickinson is feeling and how she will never be able to escape the pain, as she has the inability to die and so is trapped forever on the merry-go-round that is her life. “The feet, mechanical, go round,” this shows how the pain that she is experiencing is never ending, just as one section of the pain ends, and other is just insight and she will again feel the intense pain. We see how she wants to get off the “wooden way” that is her life, but she is unable, as she cannot die. We also see how she describes herself as separate from her, “The stiff Heart”, we see how her heart is unable to love anything, her heart is cold and stiff and in turn means that she is cold and stiff with the inability to love another. This could also, due to the non possessive language, be an indication that she has no control over her body, as if she is just the mind within the body that she is trapped in that is controlling her, and forcing her to continue on with her life. This again shown in “My life stood- a loaded gun” in which we see she takes the form of a gun and her “owner” is the only one that has the ability to take her out of the corner and use her. Even though in this poem we see how she is over joyed that she has the ability to protect and be used by the man, we can still see that she has no real control over her life and in turn has to be control for her to reach her full potential in life.

We see how the intense emotion of fear that she is feeling is reflected in the structure of her poem. We see how there is the general break down of standard English, an indication that the fear is impairing her ability to think straight and in correct English, “The stiff Heart” It is also clear in the words in which she uses in the second stanza, that she is in great pain, this is shown in words such as, “ought”, and “grown” which are words that have the “ow” like sound, which is again an expression of her pain and the constant discomfort that the headache is bringing to her. The use of iambic tetra and trimeter, gives the poem a lost quality as if there is something missing from the poem, as there is something missing from her life, but it could also be a indication that seeing as she has the inability to control her body and indeed her own life, that she is trying to exert power and take control over the only thing that she can, the structure, which would give an explanation for the ridged and structure of the poem. The use of enjambment in stanza three, “This is the hour of lead/ Remembered if outlived,” the lack of punctuation causes the word “lead” to become elongated and gives it a heavy quality as if it is weighing down the line. (Link back to other poem)  

It is also clear at many points during this poem that Dickinson has a fear of being trapped, “A quartz contentment, like a stone,” which gives the image of her effectively being a robot or the tin man, she is trapped by a hard exterior and she is non organic. This also reiterates her inability to die, as her mechanical existence will never be able to come to a close, she will never cease to exist. One of the other ways in which we see that Dickinson is in pain is in the way that she separates herself from the rest of her body, “The stiff Heart” Even though it is her heart that she is discussing, we see how there is a degree of separation, which could be an indication that she is trying to separate herself, her mind and her soul, away from the body that is having the pain inflicted upon it. This is also shown in the second line, “The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;” in which we see again how she is watching her own body from afar.  We again see the reoccurring image of Dickinson’s fear of her inability to die in the line, “Remembered if outlived,” we see how she does not want to outlive this, she does not want to outlive the pain, she wants to die so that she will never have to experience the pain again, she does not want to survive pain that she describes as being similar to the pain that Jesus bore, “was it He that bore?”