Poem Research Paper - English Class

Example English Poem Research Paper

Before I began this class, my personal reading interests were mainly in the contemporary fiction, especially that of drama, thrillers and suspense. Some of my favorite authors included Dan Brown and Brad Thor. The action is intense and many times it is hard to guess what is going to happen next. While taking this class, I begin to find an appreciation for literature, which actually surprised me a little bit. I usually find much of the classic literature hard to understand and boring. However, there were a couple of stories that truly held my interest, especially those of "A Rose for Emily" and "The Yellow Wallpaper." Two poems also interested me as well and those were "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" and "I Heard a Fly Buzz."

My personal research interests for this project delved quite a bit into the psyche of the characters. For the character of Emily, I mostly focused on searches involving character analysis. She is on the surface a character who does not appear to be complex, only coddled. However, as I kept reading closer to the middle of the story I began to think that maybe I had prejudged her and she was much deeper than I had originally given her credit for. When she began to see Homer and eventually bought rat poison, I began to wonder if maybe there was some insanity behind the mask of always seeming propriety.

Emily always seemed to either be a recluse or on the cusp of society. She never seemed to be the kind of character we see in the end of the story. This made me want to delve more into the psychological aspect of her character and the possible reasons for her behavior. Once the end of the story came and I realized that she had been sleeping with the corpse of her lover, I knew then that the character of Emily was most likely clinically insane. I wanted to research the reasons why and delve further into this.

Was Emily jilted by Homer and, if so, was it the reason that she poisoned him? The narrator in this tale never really lets you know. It appears that she was jilted but I could only guess. One interesting item that I came across in my research was the theory that Emily had an Oedipus complex. "Emily Grierson was possessed by an unresolved Oedipal complex. Her libidinal desires for her father were transferred, after his death, to a male surrogate - Homer Brown (Scherting 3). This theory made quite a bit of sense when I really thought about it, because her father appeared to control everything in her life. He is the one who thought no one was good enough for her and the main reason that Emily never settled down or married as other younger girls during that time period usually did.

She sees her father in Homer and when, in my opinion, jilts her, Emily takes it upon herself to make sure that Homer can never leave her for anyone else. She kills him and then keeps his corpse to lay with each night. While this behavior would be extremely disturbing to most people, Emily appeared to believe that it was perfectly acceptable. She has already lost the only other man in her life and she could not bear to lose Homer, even if he was treating her poorly.

The more I began to think on it, the more I believe that Scherting had an excellent theory with his comment on the Oedipus complex. Emily was sheltered and coddled by her father for her entire life and when she lost him, she appeared to lose a piece of herself. I am of the belief that this is when her behavior began to deteriorate from that of an eccentric socialite into something more sinister.

In similarity to this story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" fascinated me because it dealt with a woman, also the narrator, who slowly slips into total insanity. While the story of Emily Grierson is told in a third person point of view, this one is told in first person. The first person point of view allowed me to see firsthand her descent into total madness. With the character of Emily, it was from another person looking in from a distance. Readers do not get to see the slow slip from being sentient into someone who no longer understands right from wrong or justifies their actions and behaviors due to their madness.

In this story, she is letting readers know exactly how far she is slipping based upon the things she is currently seeing. This is why I have chosen this particular short story. I enjoyed reading these two stories and seeing how two aristocratic women can go from being particularly normal to being considered clinically insane. Although, in this story, she appears to be normal in the beginning and it is only as we read further on that we realize how much she is declining.

For this story, I researched insanity and the Victorian period. Women during this period were mostly humored by the men they were married to. Their opinions were not respected and they mostly lived a life of gentility. One line in particular seems so stress her frustration with her life. "She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick!" (Gilman 1). An analysis I was able to find states, "She is the imprisoned woman who is perfectly fine with her prison, even blaming the narrator's sickness on her untraditional thinking and writing" (Parrish 1). This is an extremely telling statement because really the women in this period were truly in a metaphorical prison because they can never do what they truly wish to do. It seems that the narrator is frustrated with her inability to do as she chooses and she begins to show frustration with her husband because of his patronizing treatment of her.

For the poetry section, I chose "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" and "I Heard a Fly Buzz," both works by Emily Dickinson. I chose these because I truly enjoy the work of this poet. Sometimes I find some of her work a little hard to understand, but I find that if I read it again I can usually begin to grasp what she is speaking of.

"Because I Could Not Stop for Death" revolves around her imminent death. She is calmly accepting it and as she rides with Death, she begins to see flashes of her life pass her by. Death is imminent for everyone but most people are fearful of the end of their life. Most do not accept it as calmly as she does. Shaw writes, "By recalling specific stages of life on earth, the speaker not only settles her temporal past but also views these happenings from a higher awareness, both literally and figuratively" (Shaw 1). She is able to see her life from someone else's point of view and this is what I believe makes her accept it more fully. She has already lived it and sees only one side. By seeing it through another view, it appears to allow her to accept it more gracefully.

I also thought this poem related to the question everyone has about life after death. What is it that happens to people after they die? Are you able to take a ride and see snippets of your life in full color, courtesy of someone else? I thought this was an interesting question, although one not easily answered. I found an interesting analysis by Allen Tate. "This is the heart of the poem: she has presented a typical Christian theme in all its final irresolution, without making any final statement about it. There is no solution to the problem; there can be only a statement of it in the full context of intellect and feeling" (Tate 1). Tate appears to be saying that Dickinson has left the question of death unanswered because it is a question that no one actually knows the answer to.

I also enjoyed the poem, "I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died." This one also is about death, although it appeared to be mostly about what happens to those you leave behind when you die. It recounts her final thoughts, what she is seeing and thinking about. It is most interesting because she is not really thinking deeply emotional thoughts, she is thinking of the most minute things when it is her time to go. Although it appears that the people she is leaving behind are only thinking of her, it seems as if they are dealing with her death the best way they know how to.

There was an interesting analysis of this poem posted on an academic website. It speaks of literal readers wondering how a dead woman is able to narrate her own poem and continues with, "Less literal readers may face appalling possibilities. If the dead woman can still speak, does this mean that dying is perpetual and continuous? Or is immortality a state of consciousness in an eternal present?" (Cuny 1). I had not thought of it that way, probably because I did not realize that the woman was dead while she was narrating the poem.

I enjoy her style of writing poetry because it is rich with symbolism and meaning, yet rich. It reminds me of Hemingway's work, because he was always so succinct in his word choices, yet he was still able to bring to life rich and entertaining stories. Although Emily Dickinson's tone is much darker than Hemingway's work, the writing style is reminiscent of the other.

Each of the stories and poems I picked out for this essay I really enjoyed for one reason or the other. I thought each of them was filled with rich meaning. In Faulkner's work, the writing seems to be slow and cumbersome, yet we can still see the slow decline of madness in the character of Emily Grierson. In "The Yellow Wallpaper," the narrator is very descriptive, almost overly so, and I was able to experience a writer, who was actually a writer, slipping slowly into madness and fixated on the wallpaper clinging to the walls. In, both of the Dickinson poem's there seems to be a preoccupation with death, either with accepting it or with being able to recount the smallest details during the final moments.

All of these works I thought would benefit from further research. I enjoyed being able to not only read these works but also having the opportunity to delve further into them and learn more about them, while also further understanding their symbolism and hidden meanings. I also enjoyed being able to differentiate the stories, while also comparing their similarities.

Works Cited

"A Literary Analysis of The Yellow Wallpaper | ParrishCo.." ParrishCo.com. N.p., n.d.

"Emily Dickinson." The City University of New York. N.p., n.d.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper." College of Staten Island Library. N.p., n.d.

Scherting, Jack. "Emily Grierson's Oedipus Complex: Motif, Motive and Meaning In Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"." Studies in Short Fiction 17: 397-405. Print.

Shaw, M.N.. "Dickinson's Because I Could Not Stop for Death." The Explicator 50.1 (1991): 20-21. Print.