Dickinson vs. Thoreau

When I was reading through the selection of Emily Dickinson poems, I was struck by how much “I Had a Guinea Golden” reminded me of this Thoreau quote: “I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travelers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tricks and what calls they answered to….and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lsot them themselves.” I liked the Thoreau quote because it recognized that most people share a certain amount of common experiences, like loss. Thoreau was hard for me to relate to because he was so egotistical and unsympathetic to the circumstances of others, but sometimes he hit on real gems, and that quote was one of them. At his best, Thoreau articulates universal human experiences, like loss and the desire for freedom, beautifully.

Emily Dickinson’s writing also articulates these things. So many of her poems hit on essential truths. “There’s a Certain Slant of Light,” “Emancipation,” “Escape,” “I’m Nobody!,” “Pain,” and “Hope is the Thing with Feathers” all stood out to me because they addressed things I’d felt myself very acutely at one point or another. I’d read “I’m Nobody!” (I think everyone’s read that one) and “Hope is the Thing with Feathers” before and I have both of them semi-memorized.

The thing I find most remarkable about Emily Dickinson is that she spent so much of her life hiding from other people, yet she seemed to understand and sympathize with them so well. While Thoreau also went out of his way to avoid people, I think the difference between them lies in the fact that Emily Dickinson seems to love and sympathize with people, while Thoreau tends to look down on anyone who doesn’t make the choices he has made. Maybe the difference is that Emily Dickinson was able to separate humanity from civilization. I got the impression that Thoreau thought that society was bad because people are bad (since people construct society), and that was why he wanted to avoid them as much as possible. I think Dickinson also thought society was bad. She once told her niece that the moment she locked the door to her bedroom, she was free. But Dickinson’s writing makes me think that she also believed people were essentially the same at base, and therefore redeemable: if we all share common experience, then we all have the potential to see ourselves in each other and be good to each other. This is also what Whitman, Jacobs, Douglass, Perkins Gilman, and Alcott say in one way or another in their books. At least in the 19^th century writing we’ve read in this class, there is a very strong strain of writers reminding us that just being alive and on earth entitles us to respect and kindness. By reminding us that we all share a common experience, they encourage us to treat each other better.