AS Lit - This World is not Conclusion

AS Lit: What mystery pervades a well!

AS Comms - Qu3 revision - My Butt is big

Let's think about:

- the use of icon, symbol and index in in this text. Can you find an example of each and briefly explain it?

- the use of anchorage. Read the copy again and analyse how it is being used to fix the meaning of the text (think also about tone, layout...)

- how Nike has chosen to represent women in this text (and why): which ideological beliefs is it challenging and supporting? How does it compare with how women are often represented in texts?

AS Comms - group identity

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. 

AS Literature: 501 This World is not Conclusion

501 This World is not Conclusion

In this poem, Dickinson explores what lies beyond the human world – and concludes that there are no satisfactory answers to this question. The only complete sentence in the poem is the very first line: ‘This World is not Conclusion.’ There is a certain irony in the fact that this is the only completed thought (signified by the full stop) in the poem. The rest of the poem is structured through a series of thoughts, characterised by Dickinson’s frequent use of the dash, thoughts which are left hanging in the last line of the poem with the final dash used: ‘That nibbles at the soul –‘ Perhaps Dickinson uses this structure to help suggest that there are no answers, that our quest for understanding will always be left incomplete. The mystery of what exists beyond human existence is personified in line 5 with ‘It beckons, and it baffles-‘ suggesting that this is a ‘Riddle’ that humans simply can’t solve, despite the tempting answers that might be on offer.

The most interesting thing for me about the poem is the way it appears to reject any religious argument for what lies beyond the human world. Dickinson's careful use of the word ‘Species’ in line 2 – ‘A Species stands beyond’- can be seen as an allusion to Darwin’s Origin of the Species (1859), in itself a text which was seen to challenge conventional religious belief with its presentation of the theory of evolution. Later in the poem, the personification of Faith as a clumsy and naïve fool – ‘Faith slips – and laughs, and rallies - /Blushes’ – emphasises the weaknesses of religious faith in providing a credible argument, and this is enhanced further when we are told that Faith ‘plucks at a twig of Evidence’. The verb ‘plucks’ suggests desperation, and when matched with the noun ‘twig’ (insubstantial – not even a branch!), there is the sense that Dickinson is ridiculing the way that many people cling to religion as an answer to the big questions of human existence. The Church as an institution is also challenged towards the end of the poem, with preaching described as no more than an empty performance through the phrase ‘Much Gesture’ and the suggestion that ‘Strong Hallelujahs roll’ off the tongue like hot air – sounding good, but amounting to nothing. Dickinson’s conclusion - if she reaches one – is about the failure of religion rather than what the answer to the mysteries of life are. In using the analogy of drugs in the final two lines of the poem ('Narcotics cannot still the Tooth/That nibbles at the soul - '), drugs which might dull the pain of toothache but will never actually cure the source of the pain, she makes the point that whilst religion might appear to provide the answers, actually this is a false solution, one which perhaps keeps people quiet and docile but stops them from questioning and challenging accepted beliefs.

Link this poem with 721 and 465.

AS Comms - The party leaders & self presentation