Honors American Literature
"Much Madness is Divinest Sense"
1. What is Dickinson saying here about people who express views different from those of the majority? Are such people mostly sane or insane in Dickinson's view?
Are such people mostly sane or insane in society's view?
How does society often treat these people?
2. How do Dickinson's comments compare to those of Thoreau in "Civil Disobedience"?
How do they compare to Emerson's in "Self Reliance"?
"Success is counted sweetest"
1. According to this poem, who values success most?
Why?
Do you agree with this? Why or why not?
2. What images are portrayed in this poem, and what example of the speaker's theory is given?
"I'm nobody! Who are you?"
1. What do the people in this poem have in common with those in Whitman's "Native Moments"?
2. What does this poem have to say about fame? What may public life do to us?
How does this compare to what Whitman wrote in "When I Heard at the Close of the Day"?
Why do you suppose Dickinson felt this way about fame?
"One need not be a Chamber -- to be Haunted--"
1. To what does the speaker compare herself?
2. What is more frightening to us than an "exterior ghost," a moonless gallop through an Abbey, or an assassin hidden in our homes?
3. What do you think were Emily Dickinson's psychic "ghosts"? What might Whitman's have been?
"Returning" ("I years had been from home")
1. What event does this poem depict?
2. What happens to the speaker when s/he goes to the door?
3. Why do you suppose s/he "fled gasping from the house"?
4. Are there any clues as to where the speaker was when s/he was away? Explain.
"The Soul Selects her own Society"
1. What does "The Soul selects her own Society" say about the way we choose friends?
2. Do you believe that this is true? Why or why not?
3. In what way does this poem convey the same message that Emerson conveyed about relationships in "Self-Reliance"?
4. In what way is the message perhaps different than Emerson's?
"Wild Nights! Wild Nights!"
1. Complete the extended metaphors in "Wild Nights":
relationship =_______________________________________________
port = ____________________ ship=_______________________
sea =_________________________
2. What do the lines "Done with the Compass --/ Done with the Chart!" probably mean?
3. If Walt Whitman were to write on the same subject that this poem addresses, how would his poem differ from Dickinson's?
Which poem do you think you would prefer? Why?
"If you were coming in the fall"
1. What do we picture the speaker doing in the first stanza?
In the second?
In the third?
2. What idea does the speaker express in the fourth stanza?
3. What do we find out, in the fifth stanza, truly bothers the speaker?
"I cannot live with You"
1. How does this poem differ from most of Dickinson's others?
2. What person in her life was she probably addressing these words to? Explain how we can know this.
3. Why can the speaker not live with the other person? What part does religion play in all this?
4. Would a speaker in a Whitman poem be concerned about such things? Why or why not?
"There's been an death in the opposite house"
1. List the images, in order, that are portrayed in this poem:
2. How does this picture of death contrast with what happens when someone dies today?
Do you see any commonalties between death today and death in the 19th century?
"The bustle in a house"
1. This poem is one extended metaphor. State that metaphor.
2. Why is this metaphor particularly appropriate to express what happens on "the morning after death"?
"After great pain, a formal feeling comes&endash;"
1. What is being described in this poem?
2. What do the words "quartz," "stone," and "lead" connote?
3. According to the speaker, what is the final stage of the "formal feeling"?
4. Have you ever felt the "formal feeling" which Dickinson describes? Explain.
"Parting" ("My life closed twice")
1. In what ways might the speaker's life have "closed" ? (Think of Dickinson's biography and consider her the speaker if you like.)
2. What is the "third event" to which the speaker refers?
3. What is meant by the last two lines of the poem?
4. How does this poem show skepticism towards traditional religious beliefs