Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson is one of the greatest figures of American Romantic poetry with her
effective and highly expressive poems that express the inner feelings of man. She led a lonely life in
the second half of the 19th century, never got married and rarely went out of her house. She did not
write for publication but for herself; so, her poems were collected and published by her sister only
after her death. Emily is classified as a romantic poet since her poems express romantic features
such as individualism, and are highly personal.
In her "Meditations," in the first stanza, Emily makes it clear that she does not belong to
earthly life or to heaven. That is, she expresses her sadness that she cannot become happy in her
earthly life and is afraid that she will not be happy in Heaven. She is confused and upset. In the
second stanza, she expresses her fear that she will become lonely in paradise because she will not
have any of her friends and relatives with her. Besides, life there will be boring because there is
nothing new, and all things are similar. She points out that she does not love paradise because it will
always be Sundays and Eden will be so lonely. That is, it will always remind her of the church that
was full only on Sundays and empty on the rest of days.
In the third stanza, the poet indicates that she does not like the idea of being always
watched and observed. She states that God is a “Telescope” and He never sleeps or turns His eyes
from the world of man and the whole universe. Thus, he can watch her all the time, which she does
not like. In the final stanza, she comments that God is always keeping an eye on her. Even if she
tried to escape from Him, she would not be able to because there is the Judgement Day when she
will be discovered. Thus, the poet is searching for a solution to end her confusion. We feel that
there is a conflict within her since she does not want to go to paradise or to stay on earth. She does
not like the idea of being always watched either by people on earth or even by God in heaven. The
solution is reached when she realizes that she can never escape from the world of God.
It is thus clear that Emily is a Romantic poet whose focus is on the world of the soul and its
relationship with God. All her poems are private expressions of her sadness and her desire to leave
the boring life of man. Her focus on the individual, her description of her emotions and feelings and
her frequent references to her loneliness—make Emily a distinguished Romantic and American
poet.
T. S. Eliot: The Hollow Men
T. S. Eliot is considered as one of the most important poets of the first half of the 20 th
century. Eliot’s poems express his disapproval of modern life with its moral corruption. Thus, his
poems are mainly religious in tone but he takes great care not to give the impression of a preacher
giving sermons. In his “The Hollow Men,” Eliot gives an image of modern man as a hollow man
without values or morality. Before Eliot starts his poem, he uses an allusion to Guy Fawkes, the
man who was executed for his role in a plot to blow up King James I and the Houses of Parliament
in 1605. Fawkes was ready to do anything to achieve his aims, even if he had to kill. Eliot portrays
this image of this evil man to show his irony. This man, though evil, is much better than those
hollow men who can do nothing in their world and their life.
The hollow men start the poem by introducing themselves; they are using the plural form
to reflect a theme of generalization; that is, the speakers in this poem stand for the whole of
humanity. They declare that they are hollow, but then contradict this image and describe
themselves as “stuffed”. However, they are stuffed with nothing but straw to confirm that they
are no more than dolls or toys. They have no life in them, no feeling or spirit, no will-power or
desire. They do not even have the ability to stand up by themselves. They compare their dry voices
to the sound of the wind passing through grass. Thus, the speakers confirm that they have no
traces of life at all. They further add that they are imprisoned in a cellar, but it is not a normal
cellar; it is their own visions in which they are locked. Their use of the pronoun “we” generalizes
the theme of the poem again. Thus, Part I describes the crisis of those speakers who are supposed
to be human beings but in reality they are not. Then, we have a shift of theme when these hollow
men begin to remember their dead relatives and friends. They want other people to pity them
more than they pity dead people because the dead have known their fate, but these men do not
know how their life will end. Here the speaker reflects the crisis of the western civilization in the
20th century that makes men consider dead people superior to living ones.