Emily Dickinson uses the power of metaphor and symbolism in her poem "My Life Had Stood-" to express the feelings she had about herself as poet at a time when women were afforded much less independent thought and freedom of expression; offers his readers a painfully honest confession of the sacrifices he believed he had to make to be the artist he was. The structure, word choice, and symbolism in the poem work elegantly to translate her internal conflict onto paper and to speak to her readers about how she sacrificed her identity as a woman to effectively unleash the creativity within her. The artistic authority denied to her by society, because she is a woman, is somehow granted to her in the act of submitting to her inner male, her "owner" and "master". Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The poem is made up of six quatrains and follows a rhythmic pattern that is quite common in its writing. The first and last stanzas are the only ones that have a solid rhyme scheme, ABCB, and the third and fourth contain slant rhymes, also ABCB. She is precise in making her points and does not use more words than she deems necessary; it is targeted and precise, but at the same time powerful and effective in its execution. Speak directly to the reader; concisely and matter-of-factly gives the reader an account of how her "loaded gun" life was "sitting in the corners", until one day her master "identified her and took her away". The rest of the poem describes the different ways his life found meaning through the hands of this “master.” The last stanza, rather than concluding the poem, leaves the reader uncertain about the nature of his relationship with the "master". The tenses vary somewhat throughout the poem. The first stanza takes place in the past, using the past tense verb “had remained” to imply that the condition that was real to her then is no longer real. The rest of the poem continues mainly in the present active. Talk about his current reality, what is actively happening in his world at that moment. He opens the last stanza to the indefinite future, giving the reader a sense of unknown about what lies ahead, and then closes the poem with the last two lines in the present tense, their meaning hanging on the uncertainty established in the previous one. two lines. Emily briefly takes the reader through her past, devotes most of the poem to the present, and closes the poem with an explanation of what she hopes will happen, what she thinks "must" happen, when the time comes for her and her. his "master" dies. Emily uses nature and the theme of hunting to express her ideas. His life is a "loaded gun", his master is a hunter. The fact that he chose nature as the realm in which to express these ideas is quite typical of his writing and serves an important purpose. Nature, “sovereign”, represents a place where man has control of his own life. These images evoke the atypical American pioneer spirit, the freedom to live independently in one's own environment, something he had not known in his “corners”. The reader also senses his forceful anger through the words he uses. “They hunt for doe,” making the mountains resonate with the sound of bullets. His smile lights up a "friendly light" over the valley, as if a "Vesuvian face had let his pleasure shine through". The power and strength of their activity in nature is like an erupting volcano, a powerful release of pent-up energy. As for symbolism in poetry, there is much to be said; the entire poem is a metaphor. There