My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close

- Emily Dickinson -

Group 5: Fareez, Asyraf, Amirah, Evie, Norizan

Identify the persona in the poem.

The poet.

State the theme of the poem.

Loss.

How does the poet develop this theme? Explain.

The theme of the poem which is loss is developed well by the poet as she tells us about her gloomy and dismal life throughout the poem. In this poem, we can see that the poet tries to share her sorrowful feelings on her life and her losses. She wants to express her feelings towards death. She also wants to show her intake on the afterlife. Reading this poem gives us a depressing mood because we can feel that the poet was very sad as she says two of her losing experiences throughout life, are equivalent to death.

Explain why the word Immortality is capitalised?

Immortality is capitalised in the poem as it shows us the peak point whereby the poet loses all her happiness and hope in life. She feels that she is the only one who will always suffer the death of people she loves. One might have expected the poet to use the word Mortality, as that is the way that most people talk about the end of life, but the use of Immortality shows the dead spirit of the poet. Through the 3rd and 4th lines of the poem, the poet says that, if immortality or endless life really happens, she will experience the feeling of losing again which symbolised by a third event.

What tone does the speaker use in that line?

Sorrowful.

Line 5, hopeless to conceive indicates

Impossible to imagine. In other words, the poet knows that there is no way to prepare for the next, perhaps inevitable, close (loss). In addition, the poet cannot imagine that anything, even death, could be more unbearable than what has already happened. Though most people know that grief and loss are an unavoidable part of the human experience, there is no way to really prepare for it before it really happens.

Parting as in the poem is rich in meaning. Explain its surface meaning and embedded meaning.
Surface meaning of parting in this poem is separation. For the embedded meaning, parting shows the relationship and difference between life of dead people and people who are still alive. When people die, they are happy because they are free and might go to heaven, but the people who are left behind in this world are suffering for the pain of losing their loved ones. This give them terrible feeling like living in hell.

This poem is written in

2 stanzas 4 lines each

In the last 2 lines, the poet changes the 1st singular (I) to 1st person plural (we). What does this mean?
In the previous lines, poet tells us the story about her life which means the loss and grief she has experienced. However, in the last 2 lines, poet uses we as she emphasises that the situation of losing someone we love might be experienced by anyone of us, not only chosen people like her. All human beings, to some degree, have to prepare for the situation whereby we are left by our loved ones because that is an unavoidable part of human experience.

What are your thoughts of the poem?

I think the poem greatly portrays the grief suffered by the poet. Understanding the poem gives us chances to experience the true feeling of the poet whereby she suffers a loss of a loved one twice in her lifetime. This has caused her so much pain that she could not imagine anything worse than the loss, not even death, which she has yet to experience. She does not want people to bother her as what she is experiencing is worse than death to her. The feeling of losing makes her so miserable that she isolates herself from the world.

 The pain of these events or losses is very sharp that the poet feels as if her life is already ended. Despite her feeling, she is of course, still physically alive and can experience more than one loss and the pain of that loss. Obviously, its close at the end of line 1 refers to her literal death. She seems like living in hell for the loss. On a universal level, the poem poignantly describes the great tragedy of human life, for to be human is to suffer loss.

Thank you.