Reading Emily Dickinson’s poems is one of the most captivating and challenging tasks for many students. On the one hand, she raises a variety of interesting themes that fulfill human life and motivate in her short poems. On the other hand, the combination of oddness and restraint confuses. There are twelve lines in her “I Died for Beauty,” but each sentence delivers a message about the poet’s interests and literary contributions. Inevitability, life-long goals, and conflict are the three themes in Dickinson’s poem that are properly conveyed through the imagery of truth and beauty.
Death is the only thing that remains inevitable in human life despite multiple intentions to avoid or postpone it by a variety of means. Dickinson introduces two speakers who died because of different reasons but similarly “adjusted in the tomb… in an adjoining room” (lines 2, 4). The poet uses such a terrible but expected end when a person leaves this world to underline humans’ equality before nature and the fact that death ends most people’s capacities to speak, wish, or act (Dahami 256). There is no need to consider achievement, knowledge, or wealth because the outcome, an empty grave, is the same for everyone.
Another significant aspect of the poem is the identification of life-long goals and possibilities. According to Dickinson, people may die with two thoughts in mind, either for beauty or truth (lines 6-7). These two concepts are so different and similar at the same time, proving her constant struggle for spiritual victory (Sharma 103). The conversation between the supporters of truth and beauty is not a debate but a contribution to Dickinson’s maturity in understanding the essence of life and the correctness of death. These two metaphors divide society into two groups who may strive for something realistic and cherished, like beauty, or search for something incomprehensible but vital, like truth. The poem shows that people are free to set and choose different goals during their lives, focusing on their interests and wants.
Finally, in her simple and unobtrusive dialogue, Dickinson seems to be bothered with the conditions that cause conflict in interpersonal relationships. There is no need to have a real opponent to be in conflict. However, the controversy between the existing forms and substance is evident in her poem (Sharma 103). Human life needs conflicts to be complete and fair, and the author helps the reader recognize the roots of questions and differences. One speaker dies for beauty but learns that it is scarce, and another speaker admires the possibility to die for truth but sees that it does not change faith. The same end and the same emptiness “covered up our names,” without giving a chance to protect and immortalize the identity (Dickinson line 12). Although this poem is not about conflict, this theme strengthens an understanding of the story.
Dickinson succeeds in using several powerful techniques and terms to demonstrate how poetry should penetrate the human mind. Her “I Died for Beauty” is not just a conversation between two persons who lived and died but a combination of hope, knowledge, and outcome. This close reading is a chance to see how Dickinson treated life and accepted death through the prism of personal goals and entire conflicts. Inevitability is never univocal, and it is a responsibility of people to live and learn and be ready for death not because of something purposeful but for something eternal.
Works Cited
Dahami, Yahya Saleh Hasan. “Emily Dickinson’s I Died for Beauty: Saying too Much Using Few Terminologies.” South Asian Research Journal of Humanities and Social Science, vol. 2, no. 4, 2020, pp. 254-260.
Dickinson, Emily. “I Died for Beauty.” PoemHunter, Web.
Sharma, Swati A. “The Verses that Breathed: Emily Dickinson, an Existentialist in an Era of Transcendentalism.” MEJO, vol. 5, 2021, pp. 103-115.