An Analysis of Emily Dickinsons Poem 670 :: Emily Dickinson Poem 670 Essays

An Analysis of Emily Dickinson's Poem 670 Have you ever been scared by your own shadow? Or have you ever been walking home at night, and nothing unusual is happening, but you can't shake this feeling that some mass murderer is following close behind, waiting to strike? Maybe you are crazy. More likely, though, you become scared by thinking of old tales or stories, like all the people who have gone into the woods and mysteriously vanished without a trace. I knew one girl who saw The Blair Witch Project and had to sleep with all the lights and the TV on that night, and still to this day won't go traipsing into the woods. Emily Dickinson dealt a lot with the notion of us being more scared of ourselves than of our surroundings. This was from one of her more serious stages, unlike "Do" and "Autumn Rhapsody" (see the parodies here). "The Brain has Corridors-surpassing / Material Place-" Not too many people would rather meet a ghost than be within their own minds, but Dickinson challenges that notion, throwing out the idea that the thought or anticipation of a terrible event is much worse than the actual thing, like people who are afraid of needles. Most people, if you talk to them, will say they dread going to get a shot. Of course, if you approach them right as they come out of the doctor's office, they'll say it wasn't bad at all. Of course, they may be lying to save face. (A good way to tell is to look at their arm: if it looks okay, then they're telling the truth; if it has turned seven shades of blue and has swollen to the size of their neck, then they just got a tetanus shot and are bluffin g about it not hurting.) But who is "I"? Who is "ourself"? The question in itself seems quite simple, but is it? It's an interesting point that she raises, specifically within the phrase, "Ourself behind ourself, concealed-" Do we really know ourselves? How can we be behind ourselves? How many vague, rhetorical questions can I ask? Too many, obviously. Anyway, after some thought, I decided that Dickinson here is probably referring to the part of ourselves that we'd rather not know, or maybe a part of ourselves that we don't know just because we can't see it.