Sight In Emily Dickinson's Poetry

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Sight was a major issue in Emily Dickinson’s life because of her vision problems and this is why her poems "Before I Got my Eye put out" and "We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” bear so much meaning and importance. The metaphor of sight acquires a primary amount of significance in both these poems and sheds light on deeper issues in life and existence. The metaphor of sight in ‘Before I Got my Eye put out’ acts as a door to the endless possibilities offered by the world. By losing sight, the poet has experienced her opening to the beauty of the world closing down and cannot see what she could see earlier. Also, since eyes are usually windows to the soul of an individual, the lack of vision has left the poet with only her soul to see or approach the world.
Further, in ‘We Grow Accustomed to the Dark’, the metaphor of sight is presented to address how human eyes adjust to darkness in both a literal and figurative sense. In accord with the poem, when there is no light and only darkness, the neighbor’s lamp provides a small amount of light to illuminate the way but it is insufficient. However, human eyes adjust to darkness and can see in the dark because they are structured that way. The metaphors of sight and darkness …show more content…
She first wants to be able to see the “meadows”, “mountains”, “forests”, “stintless stars”, “noon” and more like before but then falls into a status of delayed acceptance because she comprehends that the beauty of the world is so much that she may not be able to take it all if she had her vision back and the sun might contain too much beauty or enlightenment for her (Dickinson, Before I Got). The speaker in “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” may react to the loss of sight more readily because this speaker seems wiser and more open to the possibilities offered by the
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