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Emily DickinsonA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Due to the puzzling nature of the poem, the mourners can represent allies and an oppressive force.
The mourners keep “treading” (Line 3) in the speaker’s brain, and then they “creak” (Line 10) across the speaker’s soul with “Boots of Lead” (Line 11). The diction connects the mourners to oppression. Their treading movement and the metal footwear mark the mourners as captives—they march in unison, their feet bound. Written during the Industrial Revolution, this imagery recalls either the toil of factory workers whose repetitive steps power machinery, or the connected path of convicts, chained together with leg irons. The mourners are doomed to their repetitive march, whose rhythmic stomping recalls the speaker’s heartbeat—the relentless continuation of the unexamined life. Yet when the speaker breaks from the mourners, the speaker joins “Silence” (Line 15), and together, they find themselves “Wrecked” and “solitary” (Line 16). Their investigation into death has come with a deeply troubling price.
The mourners also symbolize guides. However antagonistically, they help the speaker envision the process of death, to experience “every plunge” (Line 19) of the mystery of nonexistence.
By Emily Dickinson
A Bird, came down the Walk
Emily Dickinson
A Clock stopped—
Emily Dickinson
A narrow Fellow in the Grass (1096)
Emily Dickinson
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Emily Dickinson
"Faith" is a fine invention
Emily Dickinson
Fame Is a Fickle Food (1702)
Emily Dickinson
Hope is a strange invention
Emily Dickinson
"Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers
Emily Dickinson
I Can Wade Grief
Emily Dickinson
I Felt a Cleaving in my Mind
Emily Dickinson
If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking
Emily Dickinson
If I should die
Emily Dickinson
If you were coming in the fall
Emily Dickinson
I heard a Fly buzz — when I died
Emily Dickinson
I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
Emily Dickinson
Much Madness is divinest Sense—
Emily Dickinson
Success Is Counted Sweetest
Emily Dickinson
Tell all the truth but tell it slant
Emily Dickinson
The Only News I Know
Emily Dickinson
There is no Frigate like a Book
Emily Dickinson