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Darkness And Sight In Emily Dickinson's Poems

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Title of Essay When most people think about darkness they usually think of evil, fear/fright, wickedness and many more negative things. Some people like Emily Dickinson who was a famous poet thought differently about darkness and what it meant to her. In two of her poems called We grow accustomed to the dark and Before I got my eyes put out she talks a lot about darkness and sight but, she uses them in a metaphorical way instead of a literal way. In both of the poems being in the dark and losing your sight both have deeper meanings and are used as metaphors to explain deeper things in life. The metaphor of darkness in the first poem was meant to be to be comparing darkness with life and the second poem was meant to be comparing sight with …show more content…

The metaphor of sight in the second poem Before I got my eyes put out is also being compared to an aspect of life which is all the little things in life that we under appreciate until we have it taken from us. This poem talks about all the stuff this person liked to see before she got her eyes put out; which basically just meant that she was losing her sight progressively, and how happy she would be to see the things that made her happy. Throughout most of the poem her diction was very nostalgic like in the first stanza she said “Before I got my eyes put out I liked as well to see As other creatures, that have eyes and know no other way”.( Dickinson) This is saying how before she went blind she liked to see just as other people did who had only one way to see. This refers to how people don 't appreciate something until they don’t have it anymore and how they only know one way to …show more content…

In conclusion, Emily Dickinson has her own personal and unique meaning for the words darkness/dark and sight. The metaphor of darkness in we grow accustomed to the dark overall is being compared to life and how you handle it. Moreover, the metaphor of sight in before I got my eyes put out is talking about how in life; we don 't appreciate things until it has been taken from us or we don’t have it anymore. Furthermore you could say that both of these poems refer to a different aspect of life. Everyone has their own perspective or idea of darkness and sight and this was Emily Dickinson’s unique view on these

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