There is a Certain Slant of Light - Example Essay #1

“Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –

            We can find no scar”

Discuss ways in which Dickinson conveys feelings of danger in ‘There’s a certain slant of light.’

Feelings of danger are important to the work of Dickinson. We see this in the poem ‘I heard a Fly buzz’ where the Fly interposes and prevents the speaker from escaping danger and reaching the “King”. Feelings of danger are also seen in the poem ‘A Narrow Fellow in the Grass’ where the fear of the snake, “fellow”, causes a separation between the body and the soul. However, it is in ‘There’s a certain slant of light’ that we see the most clear depiction of feelings of danger in Dickinson’s work. The poem explores how the light is dangerous in the sense that it entraps the speaker causing lost hope and “despair”.

In Dickinson’s poem ‘There’s a certain slant of light’, the central symbol is the “light” which oppresses the speaker and brings fear upon them. The light is dangerous as it hurts the speaker leaving a “scar” of internal pain. However, though dangerous, the pain is seen as “Heavenly” as it enables the speaker to feel an emotion other than depression, and for her this is pleasant. The fear runs throughout the poem with the speaker addressing the light as “it”; this conveys and emphasises the fear of the light and the dangerous effects that it has upon her. The speaker addresses the suffering caused by the light as a human condition, in which “we” all suffer the consequences and the danger to come such as “death”. Suffering is also seen in ‘After great pain a formal feeling comes’, the headache becomes dangerous as the speaker emphasises that it “goes round”, the implications of the headache never stopping are deadly for the speaker, as ultimately it means a life of eternal pain. The headache also causes danger as it is “mechanical” and so all control is lost, meaning the speaker is unable to regulate the pain she feels.

The structure of Dickinson’s poems can also be seen to bring about danger as they cause entrapment and therefore prevent escape. In ‘What mystery pervades a well’, the regular iambic tetrametre and trimetre creates a “well” which traps the “water”, and therefore emphasises patriarchal society and the dangers associated with dominance. ‘There’s a certain slant of light’ emphasises the discomfort the light causes by comparing it to a “weight” which prevents freedom and escape. The “weight” makes the line heavy and brings an awkward sense to the metre representing the changing nature of the light as its danger becomes more apparent. Despite the comparison of the light’s pain to a weight, the weight is the only solid idea in the poem, with all others being very soft. Towards the end of the poem, entrapment is emphasised with the speaker being unable to open the “seal” and so is locked into “despair”, hyphen follows her discovery which could be seen to represent the lost hope and faith as her fears becomes a reality, and therefore is used as a trapping feature.

Pathetic fallacy is used in ‘There’s a certain slant of light’ to represent the depression the speaker feels which emphasises the ‘end’ coming closer. The darkness of the “winter afternoons” could also be seen to foreshadow the dangerous light. Darkness as a motif for danger is also portrayed in ‘I heard a Fly buzz’, here the speaker “could not see to see” as they end up in the darkness of hell and now have no opportunity of escape; the speaker is now victim to a never-ending darkness. Synaesthesia is explored in ‘There’s a certain slant of light’, in which the speaker’s senses becomes mixed and damaged by the light; the “cathedral tunes” becomes negative and suffocate her. The tunes and the light destroy her hearing and sight, and they can now only be felt and cause physical and “internal” damage.

Ultimately, feelings of danger are crucial to Dickinson’s work. However, it is the entrapment that is brought upon the speaker that provides the strongest sense of danger as, as a result, there is no longer any escape. In ‘A Narrow Fellow in the Grass’, the speakers “feet” become detached as a result of their overriding fear, and so they are unable to move and become prey to the “fellow” trying to seek a female. In ‘There’s a certain slant of light’ we see the most effective use of danger as the light’s presence represents the speaker’s lost faith as they become punished by their “Heavenly” God.