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Death is freedom from Family:
Dickenson; ’Twas just this time last year I died.

Human life according to Emily Dickinson amounts to shit. With this poem I believe that Emily is trying, in a polite and subtle way, to examine the idea that no matter how hard one tries to express love and affection towards one’s own family, it is inevitable that they will only show their respect for you once you have died. Perhaps she even fears this happening to her, I can sympathize with her, but I think on a deeper level she has really hit the proverbial nail on the head. We shall pay no manner of attention to Emily’s past and family life as I really think (and intend to show) that this poem is about a conceptual happening, not about her or her life specifically. Besides, if you can’t figure out hat this poem isn’t about real events by the first line, perhaps we should re-think who should be teaching this course. It seems though, that Emily’s opinion of herself, or the opinion that others may have of her, is an extremely influential conception and one which, when allowed to weigh so heavy on the mind, can cause either very morbid thoughts of self or . This exemplary knowledge shines through in this her poem: ‘Twas just this time last year, I died.

What facts do we know about this speaker, and how do we know them?
In this poem we are introduced to the speaker who, in first person and in a morbid attention-getting fashion, describes their surroundings.


At the start of the final stanza the speaker says that “this sort, grieved myself.” This sort of what?

What is the attitude of the speaker towards the family?

Does the poem end happily, sadly, or some other way?

How might this poem make us re-think what it means to be a member of a family?




Find the Poem at www.bartleby.com/113/4140.html

'Twas just this time, last year, I died.
I know I heard the Corn,
When I was carried by the Farms—
It had the Tassels on—

I thought how yellow it would look—
When Richard went to mill—
And then, I wanted to get out,
But something held my will.

I thought just how Red—Apples wedged
The Stubble's joints between—
And the Carts stooping round the fields
To take the Pumpkins in—

I wondered which would miss me, least,
And when Thanksgiving, came,
If Father'd multiply the plates—
To make an even Sum—

And would it blur the Christmas glee
My Stocking hang too high
For any Santa Claus to reach
The Altitude of me—

But this sort, grieved myself,
And so, I thought the other way,
How just this time, some perfect year—
Themself, should come to me—