Painful Truth"When it comes the landscape listens,/Shadows hold their breath./When it goes 'tis like the distance/On the look of death." In the climactic stanza of Emily Dickinson's poem, "There's a certain slant of light", she shows her mastery of metaphor not only by using figurative language in every line but by relating these lines to the extended metaphor throughout the poem. However, the speaker's use of metaphor in almost every line makes it rich in meanings but also open to interpretation on the part of the reader. The speaker in the poem is Dickinson; her audience is the reader; her experience is seeing "a certain slant of light." If a reader were to read only the climax of Dickinson's poem, he/she would eagerly question the somewhat nebulous meaning of the pronoun "it". The antecedent for "it" is paramount in understanding the metaphor that extends throughout the poem. In the first line of the climax, the speaker personifies the landscape with the language "the landscape listens". The alliteration makes the language mellifluous almost as if the landscape were listening for music; however, the speaker makes it clear in the next line that the atmosphere is tense as the personified image of shadows holding their breath conveys an atmosphere of attentiveness that borders on fright. The third and fourth lines use simile which is a type of metaphor and more personification in saying that "When it goes 'tis like the distance/On the look of death". The literal representation of "it" with "distance" implies that "it" has a fleeting nature. The speaker explores the nature of "it" further with the personification of death which in itself is a paradox. It is paradoxical for the representation of death to be alive. The speaker has also brought her surroundings and even the shadows in her surroundings to life which ironically contrasts with the living presence of death. The speaker's image of personified death looking at the speaker but with some distance between them implies that the speaker is aware of death's presence but has not submitted to that presence. The "it" to which the speaker has been referring in the climax is first introduced in the first line of the poem as "a certain slant of light". Light denotes "brightness", "causing the ability to see", and more importantly to its metaphorical significance in the poem "truth in the sense of enlightenment". This definition shows that the speaker is not only literally expressing her physical encounter with sunlight and how that sunlight interacts with the natural world; she is metaphorically expressing her insights on certain slants of truth. Literally, the speaker describes the light as a presence in a natural environment, but the meaning of light as truth makes it an extended metaphor for an abstract idea, truth. The small pattern of didactic imagery in "meanings" and "teach" bolsters the idea of light as a metaphor for truth. In the introduction, the light is personified in a simile; it "oppresses like the heft/Of cathedral tunes." The multiple meanings of "light" as both a noun and adjective enlighten the reader to the great contrast the speaker has created. The light, an entity that has no weight, is given "heft" which is ironic. The speaker begins in the introduction a pattern of suffering and painful imagery with the word oppresses that extends through the poem with images of "heavenly hurt", "scar", "the seal despair", "imperial affliction" and appropriately concludes this pattern of imagery in the last line with "death" which is one way of terminating suffering. This pattern of imagery implies that the light which is a metaphor for truth causes suffering. The paradox "heavenly hurt" implies that truth is a two-edged sword. The speaker implies that truth can bring pain in conjunction with higher understanding. In the climax when the pronoun "it" is replaced with the "certain slant of light" as a metaphor for truth, the speaker implies that truth is welcomed by the "landscape" and "shadows". Since the landscape and shadows are personified, it is implied that people welcome truth. The image of the truth being welcomed by mankind after all the images of suffering and pain that truth causes mankind makes the ideas in the poem as a whole ironic. The irony of the poem is consistent with all of the literal ironies in the lines. These ironies express the speaker's experience of seeing the "certain slant of light" as enlightening yet painfully afflicting. |
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