There is a passage in To Kill a
Mockingbird by Harper Lee in which Scout asks her neighbor Miss Maudie about
the recluse of the neighborhood, Boo Radley, because she finds him strange. But Miss
Maudie tells Scout after they discuss the hypocrisy of their town that Boo may just want
to remain inside his house. Certainly,Emily Dickinson lived deliberately having chosen
solitude for contemplation, reading, and writing. Like Wordsworth, she may have found
"the world too much" with her. At any rate, she perceived, not "through a glass
darkly," but clearly the foibles of mankind in the privacy of her own
home.
Her poem, "Much Madness is Divinest Sense,"
illustrates the perspicacity of Miss Dickinson who knew that to be different is to be
misjudged, or, as Herman Melville stated, "failure is the true test of success." In
other poems, also, Miss Dickinson wrote of the incongruities of the mundane populace.
For instance, she writes a poem about how people cannot handle truth when it is spoken
frankly: "Tell all the Truth but tell it slant" describes how success at communicating
truth lies in "circuit":
readability="9">
Too right for our infirm
Delight
The turth's superb
surprise...
The Truth must dazzle
gradually
Or every man be
blind--
This poem has much
the same tone as that of "Much Madness is Divinest Sense." Another poem that has the
tone, of attitude of the author toward the incongruities and pettiness of people is her
poem entitled "I'm Nobody! Who are You?"
readability="12">
I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you
nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell!
They'd banish
us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How
public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an
admiring bog!
These poems
mentioned are just a few of the ones that explain why Emily Dickinson preferred her own
company in the solace of her own home, "residing in
indeterminancy."
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