“The Perspective of Death of Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost” Part.2

When it comes to talking about Emily Dickenson, we need to look into her unique worldview in order to understand the true intentions her masterpieces have. Moreover, there is no doubt that she was greatly influenced by the doctrine of the Second Great Awaking movement which was led by Calvinists. The Protestants strongly believed that our life destiny is already determined by God even before we are born. Therefore, those people who were belonged to this community always feared their own fate. In fact, this kind of theory is well known as “Predestination” in the theological field. However, there are many opinions that this ideology do not reflect the proper teachings of Jesus because the main principle of Christianity is to forgive, not to punish. According to those who oppose the Calvinism, it significantly deviates from the way that the authentic theology should follow. Also, they say that it is not a good thing for the shepherds to dominate the people's mind by giving them the fear of the hell. We can assume that Dickinson also found the same contradictions in “Predestination” of Calvinism and tried to criticize them. 

Dickinson wrote a lot of controversial poems which are often regarded as an accusation against Jesus or God. For instance, if we read “I heard a Fly buzz - when I died”, some people might find some Monty-Python-like black jokes in it. Maybe other people think that she tried to ridicule the traditional concept of Christianity. But, the most important thing to grasp her true purposes of those defiant poems is to understand the situation she was trapped in at that time. Among her family members, she was the only person who refused to accept the Calvinism theology. This meant that there was a possibility she could not go to heaven with her family after she dies. Her action should not be evaluated as the resistance to the Jesus. On the contrary, it has to be understood as the faithful protest for the true Christianity. She probably knew that the true Christianity must give the people the peace, not the fear. Therefore, Dickinson’s poems are sometimes quite aggressive because she wanted people to realize which way they should go.

Dickinson mentioned about heaven in her verses many times. Especially, she emphasizes that heaven is not above us. Some people may think this notion is clearly against the teachings of Jesus. However, actually it is not. Jesus never said that the kingdom of God is “physically” above us. As proof of this, he taught the followers the exact location of heaven. “Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. (Luke 17:21)” Simply speaking, Emily Dickinson’s conception of heaven was much closer to the genuine place than those ambiguous theories. Sometimes, even now, some arrogant theologians create their own weird theological ideas and propagate them as Jesus’s theories. What is worse is that once their contradictions are pointed out, those people try to pass the all buck to Jesus. If Jesus is asked “Is heaven really above us?”, he would reply like this “You have said so.” This poem seems to show her real thought.     

WHO has not found the heaven below

Will fail of it above.

God’s residence is next to mine,

His furniture is love.

(*I could not confirm whether this poem is actually Emily Dickinson’s work or not.)

Some scholars say that Frost’s poems are not religious compared with Dickinson’s verses. Partially, it would be true that we can't find many biblical jargons or quotes from bible or implications for Christian cultures in his works. However, among his works, there are some lyrics which use Christian identities. The prominent example is “The Road Not Taken”, which would be one of the most beloved and famous his legacy. This instructive story seems to be affected by the bible words; “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy[a] that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. (Matthew 7:13-14)” The interesting point of the Frost’s narrow path narrative is that, unlike bible, it never says that the grassy and worn road always gives us good things. It is just saying it makes our life different.  

              All in all, reading through some of the poems written by great poets who are representative of the U.S. was quite useful experience. Also, it is found that the efficient instructors are necessary to enjoy the true intentions of the verses because they are quite difficult to realize or translate into modern expressions especially for the non-native English speakers. Those cultural backgrounds we can see in the works were so intriguing.