HSC English Area of Study: Belonging Emily Dickinson Created by D. Parsons (last updated 2010)

Rubric: a closer look  “Personal, social and historical contexts”  “Connections”  “With people, places, groups, communities, larger world.”  “Notions of identity, relationships, acceptance, understanding”  “Potential to enrich or challenge”  “attitudes to bel. modified over time”  “choices not to belong, barriers which prevent belonging”

Rubric: a closer look (cont.)  “responder... experience and understand the possibilities... Belonging to, or exclusion from the text”  “Perspectives” – “given voice” / “absent from a text.”  “Assumptions underlying representations”  The importance of “language modes, forms, feature and structure”.

Rubric: a closer look (cont.)  The importance of an individualised engagement with the text(s)!  Note the verbs: “shape”, “experience”, “perceive”, “exploring”, “understanding (of themselves and the world)”  Therefore: your related texts must be ones that you can make informed, knowledgeable commentary on (because you know it well!)

“This is my letter to the world”  Epigrammatic poem  (short, concise, occasionally with a witty ending).  Personification ...of “Nature” and “the world”  Three Identities...  “my” (first person)  “the world” (“That never wrote”, with “hands I cannot see”)  “Nature” (connection: “For love of her... Judge tenderly of me”)

“I died for beauty but was scarce”  Intertextual Reference: John Keats (Ode to a Grecian Urn) which finishes with the lines: Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know  Personification of abstractions:  “ Beauty” and “Truth”  Metaphor of “kinsmen”  Signifies connection, specifically with ‘Art’ ...yet, “moss” reaches lips and her name is “covered up”. Art is not immortal, nor does it impart qualities of immortality.

“I had been hungry all the years”  Rhythm and Rhyme...  Again: regular rhythm (8, 6) in quatrain stanzas.  Slant rhyme: assonance (vowels) and consonance.  More satisfying to ‘envision’ than to ‘consume’.  What is “hunger” symbolic of?  Ideas of ‘abstinence’ and ‘satiety’.  What does “the entering takes away” mean?  A poem of connection and disconnection  “myself felt ill and odd”, “often shared”, “lone”.

“I gave myself to him”  Regular rhythm again, in four quatrain stanzas.  Rhyme: ‘eye-rhyme’ (“prove” / “love”) and consonance slant-rhyme (“gain” / “noon”).  What is the ‘transaction’ (“gave” / “took” “Solemn contract... Ratified”) symbolising?  The repetition of binary opposites emphasising the difficulty of not belonging despite the assumptions inherent to one’s situation / context.

“A narrow fellow in the grass”  Regular rhythm (8, 6), quatrain stanzas  Rhyme of second and fourth lines of each stanza.  Obvious theme of nature and its “people” (personification, again).  Could the “narrow fellow” (snake) be symbolic? ... It causes fear (“tighter breathing”) and estrangement (“Several... I know”... “But never met this fellow”)

“A Word dropped careless on a Page”  Regular rhythm again (8,6)  Two quatrains  Cross Rhyme (abab)  “Careless Word” = “Malaria”  A strong metaphor  Connotations to religion and, in particular, the Bible: “a page” (note capitalisation); “stimulate an eye”; Wrinkled Maker lie” (the associations of falsity and untruth - “lie”)

“What mystery pervades a well!”  Regular rhythm again (8, 6)  Cross-Rhyme quatrain stanzas  Note the words / phrases of “connection” (RUBRIC!)  “neighbor”, “stand so close”, “related somehow”, “know her” ...Yet also disconnection (“not belonging”)  “what is awe to me”, “is a stranger yet”, “know her less”

“What mystery pervades a well!”  The personification of nature ... What is the meaning / explanation?  Interesting that nature is androgynous: “his lid”, “cite her most” – movement from male to female throughout the poem.  Binary opposites again (“know her” / “know her not”; “him” / “her”; “sedge” (grass) / “sea”)  Dickinson’s envy of the “grass” of the third stanza (that he can “stand so close and look so bold / At what is awe to me.”) reinforcing her own negation from nature’s realm.

“The saddest noise, the sweetest noise”  Regular rhythm (8, 6), quatrain stanzas  Rhyming of second and fourth lines  Rich-rhyme of the last stanza (“heart” / “heart”)  A poem based on auditory influences ... Repetition of “noise”, “siren throats”, “ear”  Why is the “noise” both “sad” and “sweet”? ... For what it symbolises: the change in seasons. Anticipation of “summer”, yet the regret of time passing.

“The saddest noise, the sweetest noise”  A poem of paradox... .... The in-between / liminal spaces (“Between... The line”; “magical frontier”; “separation’s sorcery”) are both “delicious” and “cruel”.  Anaphora: “It makes us think” ... A perfect phrase to repeat because this is the poet’s project: to summon / evoke senses and associations (“the dead”, “what we had”).

 Section III Question 3 Outcomes assessed: H1, H2, H3, H4, H6, H10, H12 MARKING GUIDELINES: Criteria (2009) ‘A’ (13 – 15)  Demonstrates skilfully how the prescribed text and the related text represent the interpretation of belonging  Presents a skilful response with well-chosen detailed textual references  Composes a well integrated response using language appropriate to audience, purpose and context

‘B’ (10 – 12)  Demonstrates effectively how the prescribed text and the related text represent the interpretation of belonging  Presents an effective response with aptly chosen textual references  Composes an effective response using language appropriate to audience, purpose and context

‘C’ (7 – 9)  Demonstrates how the prescribed text and the related text represent the interpretation of belonging  Presents a response using appropriate textual references  Composes an adequate response using language appropriate to audience, purpose and context

Exemplar Introduction  According to Dickinson, belonging is paradoxically found in the condition of estrangement and exclusion. In other words it is valued by its very absence. The need to belong is a rejection of its antithetical feelings of alienation sustained by negotiating tensions between proximity and distance. Dickinson’s unconventional literary form creates a unique textual voice of extraordinary insight, originality and complexity that explores this binary opposition between understanding the value of belonging by having and not having moments or periods of inclusion and acceptance.

 This notion of proximity and distance is portrayed in I Had Been Hungry All the Year’s and …………with a sustained image of observation but not interaction. Dickinson’s eccentric use of syntax and grammar makes her poems seem fractured, cryptic and strange, which effectively accentuates the tensions of error and truth simultaneously, not necessarily by startling juxtaposition but by subtle and continuous qualifications of the ordinary meaning of words. In this way belonging is shown to be a complex process of social engagement.