Figurative language analysis on Emily Dickinson’s My Life Had

Stood – A Loaded Gun –

By : Khoirunnisa Rakhmawati

ABSTRACTIn This presentation, the writer tries to analyze a poem, entitled “My Life Had Stood - A Loaded Gun" written  by Emily Dickinson. The purpose of this writing is to analyze the poem intrinsically. The theories that used are textual, contextual, and hypertextual. The author use close reading as a method. The writer found that this poem is dominated by figurative languange, such as methapor, symbols, and personification. It can be concluded that figurative languages held important role in order to understand the poem.

Introduction Analyzing poetry is an activity that concern in

find out the true meaning that the poet tried to explain about through the intrinsic element. It tries to help you look at a poem closely, to offer you a wider and more accurate vocabulary with which to express what poem say to you. It will suggest ways to judge for yourself the poems you read. In this paper, the author choose  My life had stood – a loaded gun – written by Emily Dickinson to be analyzed. This poem, however, contains a lot of figurative language, such as metaphor and symbols to be analyzed.

  Biography of Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson is a 18th century writer. She was

born on December 10, 1830 and grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her eccentricities of punctuation, not to mention the strangeness of her metamorphose and rhymes, may derives from her sense that she was her own and only audience. She is probably the greatest female poet of  our language, and every year her audience grows wider. Dickinson died of kidney disease in Amherst, Massachusetts, on May 15, 1886 at the age of 56.  Dickinson's remarkable work was published after her death.

My Life Had Stood – A Loaded Gun –My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –

In Corners – till a DayThe Owner passed – identified – 

And carried Me away – 

And now we roam in Sovereign Woods-  

And now We hunt the Doe – And every time I speak for Him – The Mountains straight reply – 

And do I smile, such cordial lightUpon the Valley glow – It is as a Vesuvian face

Had let its pleasure through – 

And when at Night – Our good Day done 

I guard My Master's Head – 'Tis better than the Eider-Duck'sDeep Pillow – to have shared – 

To foe of His – I'm deadly foe – None stir the second time – 

On whom I lay a Yellow Eye – Or an emphatic Thumb – 

Though I than He – may longer liveHe longer must – than I – 

For I have but the power to kill,Without – the power to die –

Metaphor A metaphor, like a simile makes a comparisons between two unlike things, but it does so implicitly, without words such as like or as.According to Holman in A hand book to Literature(1960:98) : “Metaphor is an implied analogy which imaginatively identifies one object with the another and ascribed to the first one more of the qualities of the second or invest the first with emotional or imaginative qualities associated with the second.”

Metaphor in “My Life Had Stood – A Loaded Gun –”

Example of metaphor : Stanza 2 Line 6

And now We hunt the Doe –This line show metaphor. The reader will learn that “Hunt” is not is a metaphor for letting anger loose.

Stanza 1 Lines 1My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –

The gun is a symbol of power and violence. Guns are dangerous, because they have the power to take life away instantly. The gun in this poem, becomes an extended metaphor throughout it becomes representative of the speaker’s power. It is loaded, she can hunt with it, and it’s deadly

Symbols A symbol may be roughly defined as something that means more what it is. According to Meyer (1990:581) : “symbol is something that represents something else. An object, person, place, event, or action can suggest more than its literal meaning.” The meaning suggested by a symbols are determined by the context in which they appear.

Example of symbols : Stanza 3 Line 13

And when at Night – Our good Day done –In this line we see "Night’ and "Day" contrasted with one another. In this way, we understand "Night" to be a symbol for death, and "Day" to be a symbol for life. We get the sense that our speaker is approaching death at this point, her day’s work being done.

Stanza 2 Line 6And now We hunt the Doe –

The doe is a symbol for the thing that our speaker is angry at or that needs killing. It is interesting to note that does are female deer. In this way, the concept of gender is stirred up in the world of the poem.

Symbols in “My Life Had Stood – A Loaded Gun –”

Personification Personification consist in giving the attributes of a human being to an animal, an object, or an idea. It is really a subtype of metaphor, an implied comparison in which the figurative tern of the comparison is always a human being

Personification in “My Life Had Stood – A Loaded Gun –”

Example of personification : Stanza 1 Line 1

My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –The reference here to "My Life" is personified, because it is an abstracted concept that is treated as if it were able to stand like a person.

Stanza 2 Line 8The Mountains straight reply –

The "Mountains" are personified, because they reply to our speaker. This could mean that the mountains create an echo, repeating her words, but the language here leads us to believe that the mountains are doing some chit-chatting.

ConclusionMy Life Had Stood – a Loaded Gun by Emily Dickinson is a short poem of twenty-four lines divided into six stanzas.  Here Emily Dickinson uses metaphor, symbols and personification to explain more of her intention. The poem is written in the first person from the point of view of a speaker who compares her life to “a Loaded Gun.”The speaker possesses an uncanny insight into the workings of her inner self, and is able to see the interplay of experience, emotion, and intellect with incredible clarity. Anger can carry us away whether we’d like it to or not. While it can be strangely rewarding to get angry, giving you a sort of high, this process can also be highly destructive. Feelings of invincibility may be a cover for something deeper and darker than anger – something that is harder to express.

References Kennedy, X.J. 1966. LITERATURE , An introduction to Fiction,

Poetry, and Drama. Toronto : Little, Brown and Company. Perrine, Laurance. 1988. Literature, Structure, Sound and

Sense. Florida : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Franklin, R. W. 1999. The Poems of Emily Dickinson. Harvard

University Press. Meyer, Martin. 1995. The Bedford Introduction to Literature.

Boston : Bedford Books of M. Martin Press Holman, C. Hough. 1960. A handbook to Literature. New York :

The Odsseys Press Kirkpatrick, Laurance, William. 1968. Poetry with pleasure.

America: Library of Congress.