Emily Dickenson - a Day in the Life

Emily Dickenson is know as one of the greatest American poets of all time having written over 1,700 poems. One of the few poems published in her life was “A narrow fellow in the grass”, published on February 14, 1866 by the Springfield Republican. The poem is known as one of her most admired poems. In the poem, Dickenson uses similes, diction, tone atmosphere, and alliteration to play with the readers emotions and their mind to draw them into her poem.

The first line of the poem “A narrow fellow in the grass”, clues us into realization that the main character of the story is a snake. The terms used by Dickenson avoid the evil and scary persona given off by a snake. Dickenson compares the movement of the snake to human characteristics of movement, using the term “rides”, which is usually used as a verb meaning to be conveyed by a form of transportation. The “snake” is moving or riding without any apparent effort not being noticed or almost ghost-like, hence the 4th line of the poem “his notice sudden is”. The use of a simile comes into play in line 5, “The grass divides as with a comb.”. The ride of the snake divides the grass like the way a comb is divided. The grass being divided reveals the “spotted shaft” of the snake. This line brings out the characteristics of the “snake”. Dickenson describes the snake as being long, slender, and marked with spots.

To change the tone of the poem Dickenson begins to describe the location and the atmosphere in which the snake is in as a wooded area. In the first line she compared the grass to hair and the snake making its way through it like a comb. We already know that the poem is set outdoors, But in the third stanza, she describes it as a “boggy acre”. Boggy meaning-An area having a wet, spongy, acidic substrate composed chiefly of sphagnum moss and peat in which characteristic shrubs and herbs and sometimes trees usually grow. This atmosphere completely changes the tone