Rough, rough draft of my poetry analysis essay

Identity, Otherness and Isolation Found in Nature

Emily Dickinson’s poem “This is my letter to the world” reflects on personal identity, otherness and a tremendous sense of isolation.

Dickinson doesn’t strictly adhere to one metrical form. She alternates between iambic tetrameter and tri-meter respectively. The poem itself is only 8 lines, with a rhyme scheme of ABAB CBCB. However, the simplicity of the form is overshadowed by the complex subject matters. The narrator never explicitly states their identity: are they male/female? Nobility or of the poor working class? The lack of evidence concerning who is speaking to us draws one to conclude that perhaps knowing who they are isn’t important; knowing that they are, is. Yet, I cannot help but feel conflicted as to whether or not this personal consciousness of self can be described as rooted in strength. “This is my letter to the world,/ That never wrote to me,…To hands I cannot see…Judge tenderly of me!” The repetitive use of the personal pronoun draws the reader’s attention as if there was a spot light illuminating the narrator’s consciousness, demanding that we acknowledge their existence; “I live” our narrator seems to scream. If the speaker feels confident in their personal identity, they should not feel the need to draw attention to themselves. They should not feel as if they need for us, as readers, to explicitly recognize them. And yet, we as people cannot go through our lives without feeling as if we matter in some fashion. Is the narrator strong for admitting this weakness?

Some people think that a key concept of self is in evaluating who you are in relation to others. The speaker of “This Is My Letter to the World” does this by highlighting how they are different compared to the rest of the population. He or she is writing a letter “to the world” despite the fact that “the world” has blatantly ignored their existence. “Nature” has told the rest of the populace something that is described as being “simple” and overflowing with “tender majesty”. The speaker is aware that some form of communication is happening between the people they are surrounded by, and yet is unable to “see” this message that is so essential that it is “committed to hands” of those who hear it. Despite the reaffirmations that the narrator makes concerning their identity, complete with declarations of “me” and “I” and not of “we”, it is clear that it is only the speaker that is isolated in some form from the rest of the world.

Why this isolation is occurring is not expressly stated. An argument can be made that a clue lies within the word “countrymen”. The poem’s speaker makes it clear that they are an “other”, out casted by Nature , who is described as being female. Nature is speaking directly to the “countrymen” and is intently ignoring the speaker. If we take the word “countrymen” literally, we’ve isolated an entire gender, which suggests a lack of a united female community. If Nature is a woman, why is she only speaking to men? But this argument can’t hold because the speaker has not stated a kinship that could be found in the pronoun “we”; isolation is not found in an entire group of people. The isolation is intensely personal.