“A Word is Dead” (written by Emily Dickinson)

A Word is Dead      

when it is said,        

some say.    

I say it just   

begins to live          5

that day      

Analysis

The title of the text under analysis immediately strikes the reader’s attention because of the use of the word “Dead”. It is a past participle usually related to animate objects (people, animals, …). In this case, “Dead” is linked to “Word” and the combination of these two words is unusual: it means that the reader is facing a metaphor, where “Dead” is the vehicle, “Word” the tenor. The link between the vehicle and the tenor, also called “common ground”, isn’t explained in the title. It means the reader has to read the poem in order to discover what the metaphor means.

The title also gives other information and the reader can make more hypothesis about the content of the text. First, the article “A” comes before “Word” and it expands the limits of the term and generalizes it: the reader can suppose that the text won’t be about a specific word, but about different words or about something made of different words. The use of the capital letter suggests that “Word” stands for something else in which words are an important element. The reader may think that “Word” can stand for a text, a book or, better still in this case, a poem.

Furthermore, the use of the verb “is” creates a connection with a specific moment in time – the present (it doesn’t correspond to the reader’s present). Moreover the verb “is” suggests the reader that the poem might include an opinion or more than one, but he doesn’t know yet. So, considering conjectures and hypothesis from the title, the reader can suppose that the text is going to deal with an opinion about the life of a poem and that it is set at the author’s present.

         According to the layout, the reader understands the text is a poem. It is organized into a single stanza, made of six lines. The structure of the poem does not correspond to a particular poem (ballad, sonnet, etc.): the reader might suppose that the poetess created herself the structure of the poem because its content couldn’t be adapted to those above mentioned. It means the plot is not ordinary and that the reader must pay a lot of attention to the text, in order to get the message of the poem. The layout corresponds to the plot, so the interruption created by the full stop (line 3) corresponds to a division in the content.

         In the first tercet there is a third person narrator. The expression “some say” confirms the hypothesis of the title: the speaking voice is recording someone’s opinion and the word “some” suggests that it is a common opinion, shared by ordinary people. As mentioned before, the opinion deals with the life cycle of a poem: people say that the moment it is written is the same it dies. The metaphorical birth of a text coincides to its death, therefore common people’s opinion about a poem’s life is a bit contrasting, because it doesn’t even include life. The contrast between birth/life and death is recalled throughout the text by the repetition of the sound “d” and “t”, which creates interruptions, slows the rhythm and makes the text more difficult to be read. Moreover, the connection between birth and death of a poem is underlined by the run-on-line at lines 1 – 2: it emphasizes the word “when”, which summarizes the common opinion. “When” is an adverb which connects an action to a specific moment in time and not to a portion of time. In fact, in this case, birth and death happen at the same time and there is nothing between them.

         In the second tercet the narrator becomes a first person speaking voice – actually it has been all along, but the reader wasn’t able to know it until the fourth line; this is because the narrator was recording people’s opinion. The reader knows from the beginning of the tercet that the narrator is going to tell about his (the reader doesn’t know whether the narrator corresponds to the poetess) own opinion, because of the expression “I say”. The narrator’s opinion is opposite to the common people’s one: the speaking voice says that words / poems begin to live when they are written. This obviously creates a contrast with the first tercet and its content; the contrast is underlined by the full stop, as said before. The narrator’s opinion can be summarized by the word “just” (line 4): it is an adverb that place an action in a specific moment of time – in this case, the “birth” of a poem –, but it also implies a continuation in time – the poem has its own life and it belongs to time.

After knowing the content of the poem and, in particular, the two different points of view recorded, the reader may pose himself different question. He might be interested in discovering who and why should be interested in the life cycle of a poem and words in general. The question hints to someone who dedicates his time to language and so to someone who works with it, for example poets (but also writers in general). The reason why they focus on words and language is that words and language create connection, communication and links among people.

In this poem the poetess may allude to criticisms some people drew towards her or – also – towards other poets and poetry in general. She might refer to people who consider poetry and writing useless for life because they don’t think it is useful in a practical way – she refers to people who consider writing and reading just an hobby. The message she wants to convey the reader is that to her poetry (and writing in general) is alive as long as people read them and this is also an incitement for people not to stop reading: language is one of the most important and useful things in life and a person can learn language only by reading.