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An Analysis of “Hope is the thing with Feathers” by Emily Dickinson: Hope
Human beings go through many problems in the life journey. Some people feel desperate and despair with life, while others use the difficulties to make a meaningful life. For those who despair and give up quickly about life problems, hope comes in handy as the best solution for being positive amidst life trials and problems. In its basic form, hope is used to breathe new life into a person. Hope has been broadly discussed both in books and poetry. Emily Dickinson, an influential and indisputable American poet, has also made her reservation about the idea of hope in her poem, “Hope is the thing with Feathers.” Hope is a miraculous and impossible thing to defeat. More so, it does not ask anything in return. This revelation informs the paper topic about analyzing how hopes literally look and how it is essential in people’s lives basing on Dickinson’s poem.
The idea of hope is explained through an extended metaphor. The poem begins by highlighting its main metaphor–that hope is a bird by likening with having feathers as evidenced in the line (“Hope” is the thing with feathers”) (Dickinson line 1). The author adds more detail about the bird before portraying it in different situations. Basically, the first author’s description is to clarify that hope is a beautiful thing to have an aspect that has been broadly discussed in public (Parker). It makes the reader have a fresh look at things. Hope has been likened to feathers to make it clear that hope can be something light, but its significance is immeasurable. Bird feathers are light, but they have the magnitude to make a bird fly to long distances. It brings out the element of people to be hopeful to conquer major obstacles in life.
Hope is manifested in a place where there is perseverance. Dickinson has used the line “that perches in the soul” to highlight how hope is manifested and grows within a human being (Dickinson line 2). This line’s introspection reveals that “Hope” bird “perches” in the soul to imply that hope’s home is a human being’s soul. Therefore, it can be argued that hope is directly associated with the human spirit, where it sings nonstop. This unending bird singing is the perseverance that people need to have to bypass life adversities. The poem notes that even in critical despair moments, people’s actions can still be guided by the hope that they will sustain them in the end (Dickinson). In other words, in the poem, Dickinson contends that hope significance is evident in times of adversity and is used to guide people out of it. This point resonates with humanity’s challenges in an overall sense. Otherwise, it can be applied to a personal experience, such as individual grief. In either case, hope is the sole reason for carrying on no matter a situation.
At least every person in their lifetime has felt despair towards life. Some people have even lose strength in soldiering on with harsh life experiences– but Dickinson postulates that hopes play a vital role in these instances. The poem illustrates the significance of hope in this instance by noting that the number of people who have perhaps been challenged with life adversities and hope came in handy as a solution as captured in line “that kept so many warm” (Dickinson line 8). Dickinson contends that so many people have been sustained by the hope that it could otherwise diminish the little bird’s strength. Imperatively, it is deducible Hope is a beacon of a renewed individual life (Al-Muttalibi 145). The author contends that hope is free and can only be achieved by being persistent, as evidenced in the line “Yet never in Eternity, It asked a crumb of me” (Dickinson lines 11 and 12). It is free, yet its significance is immeasurable.
Conclusively, Emily Dickinson does not choose sides; she exceptionally shows how the idea of hope is manifested and is vital to human beings. The extended metaphor used in the poem makes the poem live while making the subject at hand resonate with the readers. Hope, as the main theme in Dickinson’s poem, has been noted to have different significances, such as making people have a renewed view of life, and it is costless. Hope cannot be actualized on its own. Instead, Dickinson contends that human beings need to make it an ideal environment for hope manifested in them. In particular, their souls need to be hope-centric for hope to thrive. It can be inferred from the discussion that hope is like human spirits; therefore, it works mysteriously. It is hard to measure its significances, but its effects are evident. Dickinson shows that hope is a new beginning by noting how it is manifested. Consequently, the poem could serve as a dedication to inform contemporaries to believe in hope as an aspect of soldiering on in life adversities and bypassing personal problems such as loss of personal grief.
Work Cited
Al-Muttalibi, Aziz Yousif. “A Deconstructive Reading of Dickinson’s Poetic Texts.” Advances in Language and Literary Studies 9.6 (2018): 144-147.
Dickinson, Emily. “Hope” Is The Thing With Feathers – (314)| Poetry Foundation”. Poetry Foundation, 2020, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42889/hope-is-the-thing-with-feathers-314. Accessed 27 Oct 2020.
Parker, Martin. “Alternative futures:‘Hope is a thing with feathers’.” Organizing Hope. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019.