Dickinson
I am not really a huge fan of poetry. I find it hard to read sometimes and even harder to decipher. I found most of Emily Dickinson’s poetry very hard to understand. I read in her biography that she spent most of the final years of her life in seclusion. I think it is sad that she was all alone at the end of her life. It seems like the central theme in most of her poems we had to read was death and Heaven. She also liked to mention nature a lot in her poetry. The poem that is labeled 280 speaks about a funeral. Dickinson talks about how the people come to view the body and then there is a service. Then she talks about how the body is buried. The way she narrated this poem, it seems like she is speaking from the point of view of the spirit of the body. Like the spirit does not move on until the body is buried, then it goes to it’s final destination. The poem labeled 465 talks about the central theme of death that I found in most of Dickinson’s poetry. She talks about hearing a fly buzz just as she is taking her final breaths. She speaks of peace and sadness and seeing the “King”. She talks about the will that a person must sign to tell where all of their belongings will go once they are gone. She associated the buzz of the fly with the final moments a person spends on Earth. The final thing she says in the poem is that she could no longer see meaning that ultimately she had died. Another poem that I thought was talking about death was the one labeled 764. In this poem, Dickinson is talking about the sun setting which could be taken to mean a life is ending. She talks about the shock that comes with the news of death as well.
Freeman
The story “A New England Nun” was probably my favorite story we had to read this week.. I felt horrible for Louisa because she had waited so long for the man she was supposed to marry to return. It seemed to me that she was shy and afraid to speak when Joe Dagget came to her house. They had never really met before and they were supposed to be getting married soon. They had to get to know each other and I am guessing that was what the visits were for. Louisa tried very hard to keep her house neat and clean so it would be presentable when Mr. Dagget got there. When the two first met in the story, I just thought they were friends or neighbors but I was not shocked when it was revealed that they were to get married. I felt bad for Louisa again when Mr. Dagget made a mess as he was leaving Louisa’s house. Louisa had a dog that kept her company while she was waiting for Joe to return. The dog showed some violence toward a neighbor of Louisa and now nobody would come near it. Louisa knew it was a gentle dog and when Joe returned, he saw the same thing in the dog that Louisa had seen. The worst part of this story had to be when Louisa heard Joe talking to Lily outside her house. She heard Lily trying to get Joe to marry her instead of Louisa and he said he could not do it because he had already made a commitment to Louisa. Everyday up to the night of that conversation Louisa had been sewing her wedding dress and I thought it was so sad that, even after she heard Joe say he would still marry her, she did not find it necessary to sew the dress. It was also sad that the story ended the way it did with the two of them calling off their marriage. I guess this story shows that if you do not love a person before you are engaged, the love will probably never come. I honestly think that neither Louisa nor Joe truly loved the other and it was better that they called off the marriage and did not have to live their lives in a loveless relationship.
Jewett
I enjoyed reading “A White Heron” just about as much as “The New England Nun”. It was kind of sad that she had no real human friends, only friends that were animals. I took it that the girl was very shy and afraid when she met the stranger as she was walking through the woods. Of course I think if I had met a strange person while I was walking through the woods in the dark I would be afraid too. It was very kind of the grandmother to allow this strange man to stay at her house although she had never met him before and knew nothing about him. This showed the kind of hospitality that offered to people back in the days when things were not so violent and people could actually be trusted. I myself am not a hunter and I do not see the benefit of killing animals just so they can be stuffed. I understand completely why Sylvia decided not to tell the stranger where he could find the white heron. Sylvia was very attentive and realized the perfect way to find the nest of the heron. I was shocked that she actually took the initiative to climb the tree and wait for the bird to leave it’s nest so she could see where it was. I did not understand why she did not try to find the nest after the stranger had left. After she went to all that trouble getting up early and climbing up and down the tree to locate the nest, I figured she would end up going to find it. I think the way this story ends is great. Sylvia proved to be trustworthy and a good secret keeper, even if all of her secrets came from animals.
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