Emily Dickinson Personification

Words: 873
Pages: 4

In “Apparently with no Surprise”, Emily Dickinson writes the cold hard truth regarding life and death. Throughout the poem Dickinson describes the cycles of life that we all experience in nature and the world around us everyday. Dickinson forces us to ponder life and death throughout this poem. The authors use of personification illustrates to us that death is an inevitable and also challenging part of life that we must accept. The first two lines can be broken down in many ways to represent death in a haunting and casual fashion. Initially, the reader is presented with the personification of “happy Flower[s]” (Dickinson 2). These flowers are not sad about their impending death. The flowers represent how all deaths should be; happy …show more content…
The capitalization of frost hints to us that the frost represents death itself because it has such human like qualities as it proceeds to behead the flower. This is also another example of Dickinson using personification as the frost has become the executioner in the poem. Frost is all around us on cool fall mornings and bitter winter days. In the same sense, death is lurking upon us on a daily basis. The frost doesn’t realize the power that it has as it takes the flowers life. However, no remorse is shown from the frost. This is indicative of the fact that death occurs not knowing its power or effect that it has on the people we love and it will continue to run its cycle of taking people when their time has …show more content…
“The blond Assassin pass[ing] on/ The Sun proceed[ing] unmoved” (5-6). There are many important aspects of these two lines. The first being that the frost is now personified as an assassin. This confirms that the frost does indeed represent death. The sun is also crucial here because it reminds us that we are just small beings in the grand scheme of life and that we move around the sun. The sun and nature as a whole proceed leisurely and emotionless, unaffected by the beheading that has just occurred. Even when someone or something dies, the sun will still rise the next day. The oxymoron “proceeds unmoved” (6) highlights the sun merely looking on and witnessing the workings of nature. The author states that the “Assassin passes on” (5). Here, we may ask ourselves, how can an assassin that has just taken a life be so nonchalant and simply continue on? The point that Dickinson implies here is that the assassin (or frost) will likely be back again tomorrow to do this same routine all over again and it cannot be stopped because this is simply nature. A tough reality for the flowers and people that death will affect next. Dickinson once again makes us consider the cycle of death and how it cannot be