There’s a Certain Slant of Light

 “There’s a Certain Slant of Light”

A Personal Revelation

Emily Dickinson’s life was known to be one of seclusion and isolation. Her poetry expressed her constant questioning of traditional ideas surrounding death and religion. While her family grew up as Calvinists, she shied away from the orthodox ways of her hometown, and allowed herself to believe in her own concepts about faith and God. During Dickinson’s life she also experienced much misfortune with losing those she loved and dealing with this pain. In Emily Dickinson’s poem “There’s a Certain Slant of Light”, she conveys the message that pain and suffering caused by a personal tragedy, must be overcome only through an internal revelation and not by outside persuasion.

Unlike many people in the 1800’s who strongly upheld and conformed to the common Christian beliefs, Dickinson felt more of an exclusion from the traditional religion. She felt as if people should be accepting of more of a personal influence of the ideology of faith. At the beginning of the poem “There’s a Certain Slant of Light”, Dickinson communicates that “There’s a certain Slant of light” that she can see (1). Light is often used to express a positive emotion or can indicate the presence of a positive power, such as God. In this case Dickinson describes it as light “that oppresses” (3). The oppressiveness she feels comes from the pressure to find faith through conforming to the religion during this time period. This idea of oppression is further supported through her use of the simile, “like the Heft/ Of Cathedral Tunes” referring to the weight of the church (3-4). Dickinson wishes to convey the message that this pain she feels from the sadness she is enduring makes an “internal difference” (7). Her emotions extracted by the light she sees, are not visible to the naked eye, her mental state can only be observed spiritually. While at first it appears that Dickinson is rejecting the existence of a higher being, she in fact is acknowledging that a divine being exists but can only be felt by an internal change.