AS Lit: 754 My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun

 My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun

Poem 754, ‘My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun’ is an obvious example of how Emily Dickinson personifies and characterizes inanimate objects. However, this poem is particularly unusual because it not only depicts the relationship between a gun and its owner, but is actually narrated from the perspective of the gun itself. 

Firstly, there is a sense of passivity about the gun having stood ‘In Corners’, before subsequently being ‘carried…away’ by the owner. Despite this, there is a clear sense of danger about the gun itself; it being loaded but unused suggests that it could exert deadly force, but chooses to retain this inaction. 

The use of anaphora in the second stanza concerning the words ‘And now’ arguably serves to lend a sense of pride to the tone of the narrator, through the jump to the present tense and the use of the pronoun ‘We’. Therefore, the gun takes great pleasure in now being involved in a kind of partnership with the owner. The verbs used- such as ‘roam’ and ‘hunt’- are also much more active than the previous stanza, again giving a sense of the gun being brought to life. 

The relationship between the gun and the owner is explored in more depth further on in the poem, when the former ‘guard(s) my Master’s Head-‘. There is an idea conveyed here of protectiveness, which in turn implies the strength of loyalty the gun has to the owner. This is reinforced in the following stanza, which states ‘To foe of His - I’m deadly foe-‘. Although the power balance in this relationship could lie with the gun, being the object with ‘the power to kill’, it is clear that it only acts when on behalf of the owner (‘every time I speak for Him’) and refers to him as ‘Master’. Furthermore, the last stanza claims that although the gun will physically outlive the owner, ‘He longer must – than I- /For I have but the power to kill, /Without – the power to die-‘. 
Although several alternative interpretations exist, it seems plausible that the gun is stating an attachment to the owner and an unwillingness to outlive him, and indeed places the power of death above the ability of living beings to take life. On the other hand, it could be a literal statement that the owner will continue existence past the moment of his death, being in the afterlife. Therefore, the owner will outlast the gun in a spiritual sense because he possesses a soul, which clearly the latter does not. 

Interestingly, the poem is written in hymn format; in quatrain, with a syllable pattern of 8686. The rhyming scheme is ABCB, although some rhymes are pararhymes. In this manner, it is almost as if the gun is worshipping the owner, by narrating their story by using this structure. Dickinson also employs a great deal of caesura in this poem, reflecting the jump not only from scene to scene, but the gun’s own stream of conscious thought. 

Poem 494 (‘Going to Him! Happy Letter!’) is also addressed to a man whom the poet feels great affection for, and holds similarities in that neither this man nor the man in 754 are ever mentioned by name. However, 494 is seemingly unstructured with no clear rhyming scheme, conveying a sense of excitement that lacks the controlled tone of the gun.