"The last Night She Lived" by Emily Dickinson

After reading the poem for the first, my initial impression was that it is about a girl who commits suicide. She uses the pronoun “us” and “we” to include the reader. What I found interesting about this is that she capitalizes these words, as if categorizing herself and the reader as one being. Through capitalizing many nouns, Dickinson turns them into pronouns. In doing so she personifies many elements of the poem, suggesting that things that are non-living are in fact living in some way.

After reading it a second time, I no longer believe that “She” commits suicide. Instead, it might be about dying in general however not by choice. I think the water reference in the poem is a symbol of change; the change from life to death and/ or the change the living experiences. She uses light to describe the hope “upon our Minds” (7) which suggests that we hope for the best in the worst case scenarios. By capitalizing “Minds” Dickinson makes it appear like another person or character in the poem which attributes to overlooking “Her” death.  She uses the simile “lightly as a Reed” (22) to portray death as a gentle thing. This new tone of gentleness flows through the rest of the poem, almost hauntingly. This is especially true when she says: “And We-We placed the Hair/And drew the Head erect-/ And then an awful leisure was/ Belief to regulate-” (25-28). I believe this quote is referring to a funeral and how “she” appears leisurely, how things are “supposed” to be. Using “the” right before the pronoun contradicts the fact that “hair” and “head”, physical human parts, are portrayed as living when “She” is actually dead. The repetition of “we” sounds like a stutter, symbolizing that the reader is a part of this experience, and that both the reader and the author are hesitant about death. The dashes used throughout the last part of the poem further emphasize Dickinson’s hesitation about death which contradicts the jealousy she feels towards “her”.

Lastly, I find the title interesting. It mirrors the first line and uses “live” in the past tense even though the poem is about her death. This alters my perception of the poem but I can’t pinpoint how. However, another theory I have is that it might be a feminist perspective due to the use of “she” throughout the poem.