Your Thoughts Don't Have Words

Throughout Emily Dickinson's life, she had to withstand the feeling of being an outsider because she was not the typical woman of her time. She was never married and the people in her town resented her for it. Society had its own schemas, or mental representations of how the world should be, and Emily did not fit in with those schemas. Much of her poetry therefore deals with the concept of suffering. For example, poem #378 (959) …

…cause Emily Dickinson had to withstand suffering from her society she felt compelled to write this poem to show people that their lives should not revolve around preconceived notions. In conclusion, Emily Dickinson's poem #505 (1452) presents a clear problem with the way that we use our minds. Dickinson expressed in this poem that our schemas interfere with our mental capacity. The interference causes us mental anguish and also causes other, as well as ourselves, emotional suffering.