There's a Certain Slant of Light - Example Essay #3

Discus ways in which Dickinson presents pain in ‘There’s a certain slant of light’

Pain is important to the work of Dickinson. We see this in the poem ‘It was not death, for I stood up’ where the speaker’s pain is both physical and emotional, and ultimately “despair” is all that is felt except from pain. Pain is also seen in ‘I felt a Funeral in my brain’ where other people cause overwhelming sadness and pain which “breaks” the speaker. However, it is in ‘There’s a certain slant of light’ that we see the most clear depiction of pain in Dickinson’s work. The poem explores how the light “oppresses” the speaker causing her soul to be damaged and destroyed.

The central symbol is ‘There’s a certain slant of light’ is the “light” which entraps the speaker on “winter afternoons”, the use of this pathetic fallacy emphasises the speaker’s feelings that this is the end as the pain is so overwhelming and dark. However, the speaker contrasts to this by describing her pain as “Heavenly hurt”; this oxymoron suggests that although the pain hurts her, she likes it as she is able to feel something after than depression. It also links to a religious experience and a transformation that may take place, but sadly for the speaker is does not as the “light” continues to oppress. The light damages the speaker internally rather than with a “scar” and so the damaged and destroyed soul is describes as “internal difference”; this further suggests that she is transforming as the light burns her and causes pain. The speaker’s ultimate fear of the pain is expressed through the light being described as “it” which emphasises the unspeakable pain. In ‘After great pain a formal feeling comes’ the speaker becomes “mechanical” with a “quartz” heart as she loses control of the recurring pain that has no end but rather continues to “go round”. Similarly to ‘There’s a certain slant of light’ the speaker wants to escape the pain; she wants to die as a way of escape but ultimately she is unable to.

In ‘There’s a certain slant of light’ the metre becomes distorted as the light damages the speaker. The use of iambic tetrametre and trimetre reflects the constant sense of loss and something missing, but it is in this loss that the speaker transforms and changes. The sense of loss is also conveyed through the use of a hyphen following “despair” which illustrates the speaker’s ultimate loss of hope as God does not protected her from the light. As the light’s “weight” overwhelms the speaker the line gets heavy and brings an awkward sense to the metre that reflects the “internal” damage that takes place. This change in metre is also symbolic of the speaker’s entrapment and the pain that brings upon her. The speaker uses pararhyme throughout the poem to convey that the world isn’t perfect and that “despair” is inevitable due to the pain we all suffer; the speaker goes on to use “we” and “us” to emphasise that everyone suffers the pain she feels. The speaker of ‘I felt a Funeral, in my Brain’ drops down into hell however this is better than the pain she suffers from the overwhelming noise of her funeral. The use of hyphens through the poem emphasise the “Drum” beat which overwhelms her sense and “Ear” as the noises slowly destroy mentally and physically as the light does in ‘There’s a certain slant of light’.

The speaker mixes her senses in ‘There’s a certain slant of light’ as the “light” continues to cause overwhelming pain; the “cathedral tunes” should be positive however becomes negative as they reflect the damage the light has on the speaker’s senses. And so the music she hears reflects her utter entrapment and her destroyed sight and hearing as the experience damages her. Entrapment and the pain it causes is further emphasises through the “seal” which can’t be open and so locks the speaker with the “light” and into her own “despair”. This despair can be seen to reflect the speaker’s punishment she receive from God as she loses all hope and faith due to the light’s astounding pain. Despair is also seen in the poem ‘It was not death, for I stood up’ where the speaker’s pain leads to total loss of hope that she feels more than just despair. The speaker becomes locked “without a key” which emphasises the forced entrapment which is suffered in ‘There’s a certain slant of light’, and the mental pain is leaves upon the speaker as a result.

Ultimately, pain is important to Dickinson’s work. The speaker suffers pain in ‘It was not death, for I stood up’ as her “marble feet” make her cold and immovable resulting in capture. In the poem ‘I felt a Funeral, in my Brain’ the “Boots of Lead” effect the speaker as their repetitive sound damages her soul. However, ‘There’s a certain slant of light’ has the most evident use of pain; the speaker is “seal[ed]” by the “light” as it brings despair and internal scares upon her. 

There is a Certain Slant of Light - Example Essay #2

"Oppression, like the weight of cathedral tunes"

How does Dickinson show oppression in poem 258 and in her other work.

Without a doubt, oppression is one of the key symbols of Dickinson's poems. We see in a lot of her poems, as well as "There's a certain slant of light", her emphasis on entrapment; for example, "I heard a fly buzz" and "It was not death for I stood up" where she deliberately states "As if my life were shaven And fitted to a frame". Oppression is often shown through as being stuck in the state of nothingness after life, and sometimes Dickinson uses this theme to express female suppression, like in "What mystery pervades a well". In "There is a certain slant of light", oppression is depicted by "the weight"and the heavy "cathedral tunes" where the poems seems to be going downwards, and the protagonist never being able to escape; nonetheless,  the very word- "oppression" is used on the second line of the poem, which conveys it's importance.

It is common in Dickinson's poem to have a key symbol, and we can argue that oppression is the symbol in "There's a certain slant of light".We can see it from the first stanza where Dickinson seems to suggest that the light is oppressing her; "winter afternoon" depicts a picture where nothing is alive and nothing is new, as leafs fall and flowers wilt. As for afternoons, they could represent one's life, passing youth, waiting upon it's death. Similarly in "I heard a fly buzz", Dickinson also uses something, "a fly", as a symbol of oppression, trapping her, where the fly is "between the light-and me-". Perhaps, she is suggesting her feelings as being trapped in life, not being able to escape; there is a real sense of gravity shown by "the weight" and the "cathedral tune" which is often dragged out and tiresome. The overall message seems to be Dickinson's resentment of hope and joy, suggested by the connotation of Christianity from the "cathedral tune", where in God there is hope, and hope is the very thing that is dragging her down. It is possible that Dickinson felt as if the future holds to much burden, she is growing heavy just waiting to die; yet, "pain" and "despair" are the only things that are lifting her up, suggested by "'Tis the seal, despair, An imperial affliction Sent us of the air". As mentioned earlier, this poem is very closely linked to Christianity, and pain is said to bring us closer to God, which could be Dickinson's way of saying: pain is good; we can daringly say that Dickinson seems to rejoice at "pain" because it is the closest thing to death, where oppression no longer exists. Similarly in "Because I could not stop for death", death is portrait as a gentleman caller who brings her away from her mundane life, in which dying is positive, even romantic.

Dickinson has a similar structure for most of her poems; almost all share the same rhythm- Iambic tetrameter,trimeter. However, there is an irregular rhythm on the first stanza, where "trochee" is used to depict her fear, which is often seen as she panics. This could be interpreted as an attempt to escape oppression, as she tries to break away from the regular structure. The broken structure can also be seen in "A bird came down the walk" as she is frightened by the barbaric bird and tries to hide away. Hyphen is also a familiar feature in Dickinson's poem, in "There's a certain slant of light", the hyphen is put behind "'Tis the seal, despair" which ultimately acts as the "seal" in a physical form; very cleverly, Dickinson presents to us the ultimate oppression, so huge that even word can't describe, it has to appear in a solid form. In contrary, Hyphens seems to be used as bullets in "My life had stood-a loaded gun" where shooting a bullet correlates with the sense of release and freedom. 

Dickinson quite often uses linguistic devises to express her inner emotion. As mentioned, there is a sense of a downward force in this poem which is in someway contributed by the use of sibilance on the first line: "certain slant of life"; it opens the poem with a drowsy and unpleasant atmosphere, linking to Dickinson hatred towards the days of living, her uneasy feelings for the oppression of life. Sibilance is also used in "I felt a funeral in my brain", where the line "silence some strange race" creates a kind of sinister sentiment. Pathetic fallacy is used in "on winter afternoon", to depict a scene where a day is closing to an end and the observer going much closer to death; which reminds us of her feelings of entrapment in life, just waiting to die. The sense of fear is not only shown through the broken structure on the first stanza, it is also conveyed by Dickinson's use of '"synesthesia", with the combination of "weight" and "tune"; the way she mixes up different senses shows her anxiety and again emphasises the heaviness of life. Dickinson also uses oxymoron quite frequently, this technique can be seen in "After great pain a formal feeling come" and "The last night that she lived"; yet, the phrase " heavenly hurt" from "There's a certain slant of light" is, arguably, used in the most powerful way. We can almost relate to Dickinson's view, where "affliction" is "imperial"; to her, "hurt" is pleasurable, almost reassuring, because it is her only way to escape oppression, the only thing that"sent us of the air", and all good things are from God, all good things are "heavenly".

Oppression is a very general term where it can be interpreted in many different ways; In "There's a certain slant of light", Dickinson mainly focuses on entrapment, in which she expresses her impatient with the end of life. She uses unusual poetic structure to express fear and discontentment, her desperation to break free from life, hence breaking the rigid structure. Dickinson also uses a variety of linguistic techniques to strengthen her feelings. Oppression, without a question, is the key theme to the poem, "There is a certain slant of light. 

There is a Certain Slant of Light - Notes

THERE’S A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT

An interesting wepage: http://bloggingdickinson.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/theres-certain-slant-of-light.html

THEME: ENTRAPMENT, ISOLATION, PAIN, FEAR

SYMBOL

-          “slant of light”

o   about realising something, realising the problem® being alive is the problem; she finds life impossible, once you see it, there is no way back, cannot be unseen ®end of the world

o   APOCALYPTIC

o   The slant of light acts as a focal point for the speaker’s meditation

o   change as a fearful but illuminating process, both painful and essential. Here this awe of change is embodied in the “certain Slant of light” that becomes the place of departure for the transformation.

-          “winter afternoon”

o   declining hours of daylight suggest a movement towards death or failure of vitality®pathetic fallacy

-          the shining light is too glorious for her desolate life ® cannot accept its optimism® the light hurts her 

-          “weight of cathedral tunes”

o   emphasis on the sense of being weighed down  as the usual pleasant associations of church music are undermined

o   sense of sight and hearing give way to the sense of touch in the powerful “Weight”, which embodies the great burden

o   sense of hearing: synaesthesia ® the “light”affects the sound : utterly trapped, sight and sounds being affected® all her senses are stripped away and destroyed

o   with them comes a heaviness that the speaker can't help but feel burdened by. They also inflict a kind of "Heavenly Hurt" that reveals the speaker's "internal difference" or conflict even more.

-          the light constitute to a feeling of “heavenly hurt”

o   the purposive syntax give prominence to the importance of the foregrounded phrase ® the hurt is emotional, spiritual and mental so there is “no scar” to be discovered

-          to define the feeling that the “light” gives

o   “seal despair” ® enigmatic

o   this metaphor conjures the slant of light as a wax imprint that closes down all alternative meanings of life.

o   syntax is elliptical ® not the seal of despair, but the seal and despair seem to be one and the same ® “seal”: powerful biblical overtones ® mark and ratification or sign of agreement between God and men

-          the light causes “no scar” but “infernal difference”

o   it directly causes her torment in soul ; burning inside her soul ® her inside/meaning is being changed® she doubts her existence and her life

-          the light is “sealing” her to suffer on this world, the oppression is ceaseless, and there’s no escapement, she is destined to be trapped within this

STRUCTURE

-          Iambic tetrameter and trimetre

o   Hymn- like pattern resonates with the “cathedral tunes” ® things that are originally positive and glorious becomes corrupted

§  Awkward sense to the metre ® suffocated by the light around her® causes the stanza to be disjointed

§  Suppose to be place to be calm, joy and to worship, but is now overwhelmed by sadness

§  Symbol of entrapment

-          Rhymes: "afternoon" and "tunes," "scar" and "are," and "despair" and "air."

FEATURES

-          “us”…” we”…

o   suggestive of this feeling is a common or universal human experience; not only confined to her, but to the whole human confition

-          then magnified to the “landscape”

o   it is now experienced by a personified nature ® becomes omnipresent

-          “shadow hold their breath”

o   projection of the feeling onto the landscape broadens its scope

o   final simile is ominously enigmatic® could represent indifference, an unwillingness to acknowledge the individual but it also suggests that something is beyond reach,  a condition of hopelessness where the sufferer can see no end to the suffering; passing of the feeling does not bring relief from it

-          use of pronoun- “it”

o   such fear towards the light that use the pronoun “ it” to represent it  ® as if mentioning the name is forbidden and will bring affliction

o   incapable on confronting the light® dare not to mention it, as if not addressing its name could deny its existence

-          “heavenly hurt”

o   alliteration, oxymoron ® she is scared of the entrapment and pain that it causes, but ironically, she enjoys it at the same time® as if the pain that she feels reminds that she is still living…?

o    the alliteration and capitalisation demonstrate the personal suffering which, although ironically leaving no visible scar, leads to a personal discovery of ‘Meanings’.

-          “shadows hold their breathe”

o   The immobilising personification of shadows on one hand gives them life but on the other, ironically takes away the means of sustaining it. The Slant of light stops movement. 

CONCLUSION

The “slant of light” is never meant to “seal” the “despair”, but a judicious symbol of the ominous “ death”. 

MAIN QUOTATIONS

-          “tis the seal, despair”

-          “landscape listens, shadows hold their breath”

-          “weigh of cathedral tunes”

-          “heavenly hurt; internal difference”

RHYMES

-          “light”, “weight”

-          “scar”, “are”

-          “despair, air”

-          “breath, death” 

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. 

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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