"Poem 508" Emily Dickinson
I've always been intrigued with Emily Dickinson's pieces since the beginning of high school when I actually first started to understand her writing. I find it so interesting that no matter how many pieces of hers I have read, I still seem to be introduced to more and more of her pieces that I've never read or seen before. This is true for one of the poems we read over break, "Poem 508."
I found this poem to be extremely effective because at this point in my life, and I'm sure many others in the class feel the same way, I could relate to the piece one hundred percent. Not only with religion which Dickinson introduces with the line, "Baptized, before, without the choice," I have found that in this point in my life I seem to be straying away from my parent's values and ideas in order to define some of my own. Lately I have been battling with religious beliefs and how different they are from my parents' and what I was taught to believe or follow. I think it is very important that young adults our age branch away from what they've been raised to follow and instead, go out and look for their own beliefs and values, whether it be religiously, spiritually, politically, or anything in between.
In the piece, "Poem 508", Dickinson introduces the ability to imagine new dreams and aspirations for oneself, and allowing oneself to stray away from what has been assigned to an individual from birth and parental figures. Obviously this piece is a question of a identity and the courage to break free of an identity one has been assigned essentially without one's permission. Are we really supposed to be or become the person our parents have molded us to be? Are we supposed to withhold their beliefs and values that have been instilled in us since birth? Did we decide to have any of these values? Dickinson shows through this piece not petty teenage rebellion, but instead the start of a journey of leaving an identity given to her to finding her true identity. Simply with the first two lines, "I'm ceded--I've stopped being Theirs--The name They dropped upon my face," Dickinson portrays the liberation from the identity she was cast into from either birth or Baptism and her decision to break free from what she was otherwise expected to be. Especially for women our age, I believe it is valid for us as young people to look at the individual we've become because of the way we were raised, but also consider the possibility that those values instilled in us aren't our true beliefs. As Dickinson states, "With the Will to choose, or to reject," it is essential to find the courage to defy previous roles and identities in order to define a true identity.
I completely agree with your analysis of this poem. Out of all the poems we read by Emily Dickinson, Poem 508 was my favorite. My favorite lines from the piece were, "The name They dropped upon my face...And They can put it with my Dolls, My childhood, and the string of spools, I've finished threading-too-." It just shows how much is forced upon us from before we are even born. I really like the question you brought up about about if we would have held the same values if we weren't molded to have them. It is a great question, and I think some things may be instilled in us by our parents and environment, but I do think a lot of our values come from our own experiences and how we grow as people over time.
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