There is a Certain Slant of Light - Essay Plan

‘There’s a Certain Slant of Light’

Pain/ Entrapment/ Danger/ Terror

Introduction

-          ‘Corridors‘ in ‘The brain’ in After great pain, a formal feeling comes conveys the horror inside a person – the hidden and scary places in a mind are more dangerous than ‘external ghosts’

-          The last night that she lived where she expresses the pain of being trapped in the world that is ‘awful’ to her.  She sees being ‘dead’ as a way to escape from the pain

-          ‘Despair’ in It was not death, for I stood up that shows the image of her drifting away from hope

Central Symbol

Pain

-          ‘Light’ is the central symbol of pain in the poem

-          The speaker claims that it gives us ‘Heavenly hurt’

-          Oxymoronic alliteration emphasising how severe the pain is

-          Giving religious quality to the pain: the hurt is not physical, but emotional, spiritual and mental so leaves ‘no scar’

-          Heaven, rather than being portrayed as place of eternal happiness, it is associated to pain; it emphasises description of sadness in the poem: even Heaven has turned dangerous because of the unbearable pain that she is suffering, nothing can release her from suffering

-          Perhaps the inclusion of the key theme of religion is to add onto the ‘weight’ that the speaker is suffering: religion is not uplifting her suffering, but it is devastating and is ‘oppressing’ her

-          It is perhaps a punishment from God; ‘an imperial affliction’ that damages her soul from the inside: an ‘internal difference’

-          She is implying that the pain is so great that it cannot be explained by usual descriptions – it is something comparable to the energy of God

References to Heaven are also found in Behind Me – dips Eternity where the speaker despises God by regarding Jesus as the ‘Son of None’. She uses a sarcastic tone towards heaven because she does not believe in it – she argues that God does not release her from her pain and that she is still suffering from the ‘Maelstrom’ and the ‘midnight’ in her life that wishes to escape from

Entrapment

-          ‘Light’ is the central motif that symbolises entrapment in the poem

-          The speaker suggests that it ‘oppresses’ her and gives her ‘weight’, giving a sense of suffocation

-          This is ironic: light usually connotes hope and peace but here it is trapping her, giving weights to her. 

-          She is hurt by something that should not be harmful – this signifies her vulnerability and her lack of power to escape from the oppression

-          ‘Tis the seal, despair, -‘ establishes an enigmatic atmosphere to the stanza

-          The juxtaposition might be arguing that the two nouns are the same and have equal qualities

-          The word ‘seal’ has powerful biblical overtones, being both a mark and a ratification or sign of agreement between God an man; this gives it weight – it has been bestowed by a higher power and is therefore inescapable

-          In comparison,  ‘despair’ also depicts the lack of faith.  It suggests that the spealer has completely surrendered to sadness.  Described as ‘an imperial affliction’, ‘despair’ might also be a punishment from God, like the ‘seal’; it empitomises the power of emotional devastation that the speaker is suffering from

The symbolism of light connotes to the use of ‘quartz contentment, like a stone’ in After great pain a formal feeling comes as a symbol of the speaker being trapped in continuous pain.  Quartzes that are used in watches are ‘mechanical’ indicates that the speaker has cannot control the suffering – she is trapped within the pain.      

Terror/ Danger

-          (see above) even God is not helping….

-          Dickinson successfully portrays terror through personification

-          The ‘Landscape listens’ and ‘shadows hold their breaths’

-          This enhances the danger of ‘it’ – which is the light

-          It may seem very terrifying that the speaker cannot even bring to say its name but uses the pronoun ‘it’ instead; euphemism; the light has the whole of the world in fear

-          Projection of the feeling onto the landscape broadens its scope 

-          Terrifying: the poem leaves audiences in confusion about the ‘distance/ on the look fo death’.  It maybe suggesting that someing is beyond reach – there is no end to the suffering. 

-          Hopelessness

In A narrow fellow in the grass, danger is also depicted through the nature.   Euphemism is used as the speaker refers a snake to a ‘narrow fellow’.  This may imply the dangerous power of the snake – it is a phallic imagery that symbol how male power are destructive to women.  The speaker calls it ‘a narrow fellow’ instead in order to calm herself down from the fear

Structure

-          The poem is structured by Iambic and quatrains that reflect the speaker’s attempt to calm down from the panic and stabilise her thoughts.

-          However, clearly, it is not successful

-          When it comes, the landscape listens –

Shadows – hold their breath –‘

-          The structure of the poem resembles some church music that are also quatrains

-         But the use of quatrains does not convey the pleasant feeling in most churches, it adds to the panic caused ‘Cathedral Tunes’.

-         Perhaps she is suggesting that the suffering that ‘Heaven’ and Cathedral Tunes’ are damaging the rhythm of the poem – damaging church hymns that should sound complete and peaceful

-          The usual eight syllables in lines one and three are contracted to seven and the usual six syllables in lines two and four becoming five

-          The stress pattern creates an irregular rhythm, which expresses her panic inside: The effect is so great that her lines are disrupted by the panic  

Similarly, the speaker in What mystery pervades a well also use iambic trimester and tetrameter to indicate entrapment in the poem.  She implies that the set up of the poem resembles the shape of a ‘jar’ that is trapping her.  The structure visualises the suffering to the audience, emphasising the severity of her message as it seems like the audience can actually ‘see’ what the sufferings have caused to her soul. 

-          Most of Dickinson’s poems have an ABCB rhyme scheme with skillful use of pararhymes.

-          In the first three stanzas this patter is followed; lines two and four are rhymed: ‘afternoons’ and ‘tunes’

-          The half rhymes break the rhythm and give an awkward sense to the metre – again, reflecting how the suffering inside breaks the speaker’s attempt to stay calm and stable

-          They disturb the line and make it sound more heavy, conveying how she is suffocating

-          However, the last stanza has a ‘weak’ rhyme in ‘listens’ and ‘Distance’ as well as ‘strong’ single syllable rhyme ‘breath’ and ‘Death’, giving it a tighter form and construction. 

-          This may be because the speaker sees the end of time in this last stanza where her suffering is projected onto the ‘landscape’.  It is no longer personal – even ‘Shadows’ are terrified as they ‘hold their breath’.

-          By changing the rhyme scheme, the speaker is showing that she starts to see the end of all the sufferings – but the way to escape is ‘death’.

-          Presenting a apocalyptic sense in the end of the poem

This technique is echoed in It was not death, for I stoop up where the fifth stanza stands out with the solid rhyme of ‘around’ and ‘ground’.  This, likewise, is indicating that she finds comfort when talking about death as it is ‘when everything that ticked has stopped’ and she is then free from the sufferings

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