The Poetry Of Realist Emily Dickinson

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

World Lit. 2

Comparing the poetry of realist Emily Dickinson to the short story Chickamauga by naturalist Ambrose Bierce allows the ability to examine both similarities and differences between the two related views. Realism and naturalism both are periods during which writing (generally speaking) seems to feel more dark, gloomy, and manifested from the desire to draw back curtains to the audience that they may not wish to examine. Realism coming first, seemed to still have manners of politeness: or at least avoids delving into the full gloom that naturalism allows. Dickinson, while viewed by many people to be one of the darkest, gloomiest writers ever, in all actuality covers materials with a beautiful grace requiring deep examination which is found lacking from the writing of realist Ambrose Bierce, who chooses rather to shock readers into realization.

The tonality with which each writer approaches death speaks magnitudes towards the two's differing camps of thought. Dickinson, within Poem 712, writes death as a companion: a character who accompanies the speaker in the poem along a journey towards the afterlife. She chooses to make death a traveler with the speaker in order to allow the reader to examine death from a more comfortable vantage point rather than taking the path Bierce opts for within Chickamauga. Bierce chooses tells his short from the perspective of lost child coming across a wartorn and injured camp of soldiers. Instead of this child's innocence allowing the reader to see a profound truth that experience has clouded in time, the child's innocence and naivety is intended to disgust and anger the reader. We first meet death not in the form of a congenial and friendly co-traveler but rather a taker of men. Death is catching up to the band of soldiers while they claw, drag, and limp their way towards a destination most will surely not finish.

Dickinson avoids grave details of death itself. She rather opts to have the speaker reflect upon the world around her that is so full of life instead of dwelling on the details of the speaker's end. Dickinson also includes children in her poem; but rather than using the child to enrage and disgust the reader, her intent is to contrast a young life with the life now ending. Within a matter of words she clearly describes the childrens' day at school. They play with one another during recess around a ring. This allows the reader to fill in the lack of details for the scene. This also once again allows the reader to reflect upon the joys of young life while reading a poem of life coming to a close.

Bierce opts rather to skip not a detail surrounding his settings of death. His details of death are dark, reflective, and detailed. The reader is forced to imagine the scene as Bierce himself sees it: Gorey, bloody, morose. Through the eyes of our bumbling main character we are tasked with imagining waves of dying people shuffling forward while each suffers uniquely. Bierce, oddly enough, also opts to have the child playing. Though he uses the child's playing as yet another tool for throwing the reader out of their comfort zone. While Dickinson allows you to keep composed and reflect upon scenes in many unique ways, Bierce chooses to continually blast the reader with shock and awe. The children in both stories are arguably innocent, however the one in Bierce's still wishes to provoke the reader to a reaction. While innocent, this child mounts the back of a dying man and attempts to ride him as a colt. Rather than the child's innocence allowing us to view death through a new lens that inspires us to new thoughts, we're disgusting with this scene. I found myself happy to read of when the child was flung off of the man and terrified when he saw his rather grotesquely described face. Bierce refuses to let up though as he then has the child strike out again at the reader by pretending the lead the band of dying men.

Bierce allows the reader to assume the child slept during a great battle in the woods where he ventured. Yet another aggravating detail used for Bierce's final and greatest shock in store for the reader. While we find ourselves growing to be remarkably angered by a child, we're secretly learning something about ourselves. While Dickinson subtly paints her thoughts through short verses that still allow great beauty, Bierce is leading the readers to a shocking reveal that will turn upside down the emotions the readers allowed themselves to feel.

Dickinson's details are to the point, and never rambling. Her writing takes on more of a dreamlike feel to it. Details are not there to paint a full scene but capture emotions and important emotions, lessons, and opinions. Meanwhile Bierce's details are intended to draw the reader into the environment in which he writes. We approach the close of each story with a different anxiety. Dickinson gives a peaceful resolution and sense of resting eternally. While we continue to read Bierce however, we grow nervous towards the conclusion that approaches. So far, the child has managed to so fully disgust most readers and bumble into worse and worse scenarios that we now have grown a sixth sense that the fire he joyfully approaches will lead to nothing good: Rather something far worse than experienced so far. And indeed as we're greeted with closing paragraphs we're given a view of a child that we've grown to hate dancing in red flames in front of desolation and death. The last image we're given is now of a deaf mute child wishing nothing more than to communicate with his dead mother he stands before.

Dickinson guided us almost as death guides the character in her poem. Bierce instead misguides us. We're led to hate a deaf, mute child. Bierce wishes to shock us and use death to not truly teach us about death itself, but ourselves. We go through an entire story blaming a child that has no way of knowing better for his actions, and only in the end do we (or we should) feel terrible pity for the child and remorse for our own anger. Bierce reveals our own dark reflection through a child experiencing death. Meanwhile Dickinson uses death to reveal a peaceful end of a beautiful journey. Both writers focused on the same subject used different means to achieve the goals they set out for.