Emily Dickinsons Apparently With No Surprise English Literature Essay

Emily talks of nature bounties well streamed with the philosophy of life. She tells about a flower which is in full bloom at one point of time but is destroyed as the winters approaches. The sun which plays its daily role is not affected, the moment flower falls, as it is busy and has to rise the next day. Emily Dickenson’s emphasizes the discipline followed by the Nature in its might as it has to follow what God wants and approves. Whatever plight comes to any of His creations, he is the one to oversee their life cycle.

The sun eats away the frost and then its light diminishes later in the end of the day, all set to rise again. The poet defends the frost by calling it “blonde” and it is not the culprit because according to her it also works as God’s wishes. She denotes the happening as an accident.The action of the winter frost according to her is not deliberate. The flower blooms from a bud, its infancy to full maturity, and reaches its end. The poet rules out any possibility of a doubt as she is firm on the line up of events. No body can wish for the flower to exist still eternity or to fail the laws of Nature.

Robert Frost’s Design

Design as the name depicts points to the design or structure of some function that is going on. Robert Frost has described the cycle of nature by including the story of a spider and the moth. The spider kills the moth. The poet includes other elements of nature like the flower which is neutral to all the action. The flower can act as a panacea but it plays no role in saving the moth.

All the character are static in nature and it seems the happenings are pre-planned. Frost compares the spider and moth with the satin cloth which is lying and can not move. Further he symbolizes the scheme of the happenings and constituents as the ingredients of a witch’s broth which contains the spider like a snow drop, the flower like the froth and dead wings of the moth like the paper kite. The color white, brings harmony in the assortment.

The poet talks about the irony, wherein the helpless heal-all flower exists and he is not able to make out what prompted the moth and the spider to reach each other, to meet such an end.

Eventually the poet agrees that all the actors of this plot are a part of a design.

Similarities

Both the writers have taken nature as a means to express their philosophy, for they think nature is righteous in making rules and it sticks to the rules. They in all ways want the readers to understand the immortality of life forms. The nature acts as a metaphor of life. The central idea professed by the poets is that nothing lasts forever.

The start is depicted, by the sun and its task to be available the next day in Dickenson’s “Apparently with No Surprise”, while Frost uses “to begin the morning right” to convey the same feeling of brightness. They are successful in generating hope in the readers mind by emphasizing “morning” and “sun”. As the sun rises and sets daily, the mention of the next morning conveys the eternal flow of life.

All the elements like flower, spider and moth are a part of a story which has a beginning and an end. They all emerge from the bosom of Mother Nature and attain culmination.

In Emily’s poem, the frost is the cause of death of the flower and Frost ushers the spider to kill the moth in his poem, but both are subtle in offending them as culprits. They are considered as mere task performers for an unknown power and are guided by it. Unaffected by the outcomes, both these poems are perfect examples of God making his rules without any favoritism.

The organization of the sequence of events is grand but they still project the simple truth. The philosophy to be understood by men is that, they have to continue working without lamenting on the outcomes and life and death. All the happenings are predestined by the supreme power.

There are “assassins” as quoted by Emily ,events or people in our lives who are unaware of their acts and hurt us or cause harm but it is all “accidental” and similarly anything can happen in our live which are not known to us or we are not prepared for them. We can not alter them but at the same time there are positive hints and shining light amidst dark clouds. As human, we should believe on the Almighty, as he will always take care of us. He is “approving” as mentioned by Emily.

A lot of similes are used in these poems which are mapped brilliantly between the literary thoughts and scientific analogies for the same

Differences

Emily is a Victorian poet while Robert Frost writes with a modernist approach. This fact is quiet evident in their poems.

Emily depends more on the beauty of nature to share her views of life. She creates an ambience of light and colors which effectively picturises the scene of a well lit garden before our eyes. The mention of sun creates a shining background. The agony of the flower dying is not so pronounced as the aura of the sun and receding winters arouse hope. Emily in the end proclaims the might and caress of God’s involvement. She calls Him “approving” which renders an optimistic view towards God.

Robert Frost has an element of atheism, as he doesn’t mention God but agrees to an unknown guiding force by using the word ‘design’. He is not sure of the happenings and seems to question in awe, what drives all the creatures to be as they are painted in his poem. It seems he agrees to the line up of events, but is amazed by the helplessness of the heal-all flower and the moth.

Frost’s description of the nature is surrounded by darkness and light. He doesn’t talk of hope as the color white turns down any dynamism in the story. The use of similes like ‘rigid satin cloth’, ‘froth’, ‘paper kite’ talk of substances that do not exist in nature so they pose a notion that death is dictating the arena and it has caused all the matter to stand-still.

Frost’s poem ‘Design’ is static verb driven. There is figurative speech employed in the case of ‘Apparently with no Surprise”. There is a fair amount of alliteration used.Emily uses alternate rhyming words in her poem while Frost doesn’t follow a repetitive scheme. But Frost is able to attach rhyming in a significant way.

Emily has established the fact that though she has completed the poem in one stanza, she can bring the whole life of a garden and the natural beauties together in few lines without losing the central idea even once. Frost has managed to put together the idea and his own questions through a sonnet.

Conclusion

Both these writers have pacified the hunger of readers for philosophies of life, its questions and its answers in a substantial way. They have added a link to the variety of fascination people hold about nature and their look out for good pieces of writing, through their poetry.

In the real world, there can be no better examples of preaching harmony, peace, patience and belief towards life and its various facets. The imagination of these poets, though visualized at different instances convey the same realities.