Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Who is speaking in Emily Dickinson's poem In the Garden?

In Emily Dickinson's poem In the Garden the speaker is unnamed, therefore the reader is free to associate the speaker of the poem with Dickinson herself. In this poem, Dickinson, as the speaker, is noting her observation of a bird in the garden. He departs the garden upon her offer of a crumb. Dickinson compares his flight to oars silently dividing the "too silver" ocean and to butterflies flying at noon through the ocean of the sky. She deepens her comparative metaphors by saying the bird "rowed him softer home," again through the metaphorical ocean of the sky, and the butterflies "leap" and "swim," though making no splashes ("plashless"), through their metaphorical ocean waters.

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