Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Poetry Dickinson8217s 8220My Life Had Stood8212A Loaded Gun8221 Dickinson8217s 8220My Life Had Stood8212A Loaded Gun8221 Today, few would deny that Emily Dickinson is an important figure in American literature. The numerous ways to interpret her poetry draws more and more readers into her publications. It’s as if everyone could interpret Dickinson’s poems into his or her personal life; seeing the poems the way they want to see it. This is the effect “flexible” poems have on people. In Dickinson’s “My Life Had Stood—A Loaded Gun”, I interpreted the poem literally, thinking the poem was really about a gun and the relationship with its owner. But as I read the poem more and more, I felt the power and rage engulfed into this piece. I also gathered that, like most of Dickinson’s poetry, there is a common denominator of her personal life and views into each of her pieces pf poetry. And the poem may very well supposed to be about a gun, but I interpreted it in a way that factored her into it. I also read a little about Emily Dickinson and her life as a poet. And when I read about certain parts of her life and feelings, the poem seemed to “click” with her personal feelings about her life with poetry, like there was a sort of connection. She felt forced to practice her art privately, that is, she wrote her poetry privately and shared it with only a few family members and friends. To be able to dedicate herself to poetry, she withdrew into seclusion. It was a heavy price to pay to be a poet. This poem, with its "Vesuvian" voice, expresses her rage at the restrictions on the woman poet, her sense of the power of language, and the sense of control that writing poetry gave her. This poem seems very powerful and full of rage. The speaker compares her life to an unused loaded gun and finds joy in fulfilling its purpose to kill. She seems to have been in a corner, or more unused with no purpose until one day a hunter finds her and knew her purpose. And since he was her “Master”(possibly a lover, or another male who plays a significant role in her life, liken her father?), he decided to use her to express her purpose. Maybe her purpose is poetry. The poet experiences herself as loaded gun, imperious energy. Yet without the “Master”, the possessor, she is merely lethal. And when she describes herself as a “Loaded Gun”, I think she means she’s been full of rage or anger and has been holding it in for such a long time. Or she may just be full of emotion and thought, and experience, and she just wants some way or chance to express herself. And whenever she has the next chance to release this rage, it could be harmful, just like a loaded gun—she has the potential to cause harm. The "doe" (female deer) is hunted and presumably killed, just as women writers feel they have to kill or suppress a part of themselves to write. Or maybe just as Dickinson felt strained to write poetry in seclusion. But I’m wondering if all female poets felt the same as she? Did they feel that they had to write poetry in private? Also, when she talks about the “Woods being Sovereign”, it gives a sense of control. This all gives me the impression that being a “loaded gun” she is harmless until her master takes possession of it (her). And in the line, “And every time I speak for him/ The Mountains straight reply”, it represents language to me—the expression of the gun, creating poetry. In the section where Dickinson writes: "And do I smile, such cordial light To me this illustrates that when she expresses her feelings, her surroundings, audience, and environment are illuminated by a psychological truth from deep within Dickinson. She experiences this explosive release as a satisfying expression of her nature as a poet, as a volcano must unleash its lava. She is explosive with her thrill of being able to express herself so freely, as she’s wanted to do for a long time. The speaker also seems to prefer to stand over her “Master” rather than to share a soft downy pillow with him; she rejects the chance of being intimate and she rejects the softer life, the homelier option: And when at Night - Our good Day done - As you can see, she prefers guarding the master to having shared his pillow, that is, to having shared intimacy with him. As a consequence, the speaker seems ironically and almost condescendingly distant from the world of life (here, of potential life-creation or love). As the poem goes on, I had a harder and harder time trying to interpret what she was implying. For example, in the lines: I was trying to find out what a Yellow Eye was supposed to mean, and I think it has to do with the sight gauge on a gun; and an emphatic thumb represents a thumb on a trigger of a gun, ready to shoot. So I feel that she’s saying a “foe” of his is a “foe” of hers, like she’s watching over him and protecting him, just like in the lines before. So she’s ready to “jump down their throat” if they rub her the wrong way, because she’s a deadly foe. Maybe she’s a “deadly foe” in a sense that she is strong with her words and intelligence and can harm someone intellectually. The speaker's purpose, power, and control are destructive and bring her the joy and satisfaction. But she also fears the thought of living without her “master”, and she wants him to outlive her, “Though I than He—may longer live/ He longer must—than I”. And maybe when she says “For I have but the power to kill/Without—the power to die”, I think she’s implying the phrase “words can kill”, applying to the lines previous, like her being the deadly foe. And she will live forever through her poetry, so she cannot die in a sense that she will be forgotten. Her written thoughts, words, feelings, and emotions as a poet will live forever in the minds of her audience. She does not have the power to die as long as her written work is out in the minds of others. Bibliography: none Word Count: 1135
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