An essay comparin­g emotion within poem 254, by Emily Dickinso­n and Price We pay for the Sun, by Grace Nichols

Focussing on the works of at least two poets you have studied, discuss the presentation of strong emotions.

Throughout works by both Emily Dickinson and Grace Nichols, emotion is prevalent in juxtaposing ways and is used to engrave within to the readers’ minds ideas of bitterness and despair, yet hope and Biblicism. Through the use of such polarising emotions, the reader is able to view the complications and temperaments of two contextually dissimilar speakers.

Within poem 254, by Emily Dickinson, there is a resounding message of the eternal nature of hope. The extended metaphor of a bird is used to materialise hope: “Hope is the Thing with Feathers,” (1). Evidently “Hope” is inanimate, however, through giving it feathers, Dickinson starts to shape an image of hope as a bird in the reader’s minds.

The “Feathers” depicted here enable a person to soar away from their problems gracefully, summoning images of people who have been enveloped by life’s afflictions.

Contrastingly in “Price We Pay for the Sun” by Grace Nichols, a sense of helplessness and despair is portrayed within the lives of the native peoples. The native are afflicted by diseases, poverty and death: “my mother’s breasts… like sleeping volcanoes” (12-13).

Here Nichols uses neologism to portray emotions such as sorrow and despair within the speaker to illustrate the cruelty of life in her homeland. Cancer is portrayed as rampant, conveyed through puns such as those on the words “sulphurous” and “furious” to “sulph-furious” (15).

Black humour is used here to emphasise the metaphor of volcanoes as life-threating in not only their immediate destruction through the use of “split(ing)…bone” (line 9 and line 10), but also in the cancer that they bring to the people.

There is an evident and stark contrast between poem 254 and the omnipotent hope it presents and The Price We Pay for the Sun in its misery. Poem 254 radiates happiness and optimism: (hope) “perches in the soul . and never stops – at all” (2 &4). Here hope is ever-present and the speaker feels it in their soul, facilitating the drive to succeed and survive. “Sings the tune without the words” (3) suggests that the “song” of hope within the soul is non-linguistic, non-rational, and instinctive.

In other words, this indiscriminate emotion is so powerful that it resonates within people though they may not be able to understand why it does so. However, the speaker does not suggest that this is a solution to the many woes of life. Hope only perches the soul in order to provide it with the determination it needs to organise the host’s life itself. “At all” further emphasises the eternality of hope and how its strength is the focal point of this poem.

Correspondingly, Price We Pay for the Sun presents the emotion of anger embodied within the speaker’s father: “my father’s tears… to salty hurricanes” (20-21) presents an image of power and fury that is forged from her father’s tears. The primary emotion portrayed here may be anger, as he is unable to save his dying wife.

Alternatively, the use of “hurricane” emphasises the extent of the emotion that the father is feeling. Just as Hurricanes are violent storms so too is the force of the father’s tears. He is sobbing pugnaciously, with the imagery used to help the reader empathise with the misery that the native people feel, living under the threat of death while opulent tourists live extravagantly in the hotels on the island.

Dissimilarly, Dickinson’s depiction of hope being “sweetest – in the Gale” (5) describes the bird’s song of hope as strongest when a person faces the greatest challenges. The use of the hyphen allows the reader’s mind to conjure images of a bird’s song of hope whistling above the sound of gale force winds and offering a promise that soon, the storm will end.

The emotion of regret is then explored within the proceeding line: “and sore must be the storm” (6) gives hope a resilient quality. What is being said about hope is that any person or entity, such as the storm, who attempts to destroy hope by being overcome by anger and fear, will witness the pain that they have cause in others.

In line 7, the extended metaphor of the bird symbolises hope is “abash(ed)”, which adds to the element of the purity of hope and how its enemies are only doing damage to themselves and others around them, when they lose hope. In essence, strong emotions of despair and general negativity are prodigiously crushed by hope and its omnipotent qualities of everlastingness and manifestation in life, ‘when the going gets tough’.

The plosive-alliterated “picture postcards” emphasises emotions of zeal and anger, while superficially beautifying her homeland, though there is a clear distinction between appearances to foreigners and reality to the natives. With regards to “unravelling”, the poet expresses discontent for the tourists’ vision of these islands.

Within line 5 and 6, a hyperbole of “real… more real” is used to further emphasises the speaker’s bitterness towards the tourists who merely see the islands as holiday destinations and not as a land which interlinks both people and place.

Finally within poem 254, hope is described as benevolent and altruistic: “never… (hope) asked a crumb – of me” (11-12). The speaker emphasises that hope is an unrestricted gift, which exists in some form (a bird) or another for every one of us. An condition is presented in the concluding lines, in order to sustain humanity’s relationship with hope – all that must be done is not to clip its wings, so that hope is able to fly and sing freely.

To conclude the bitterness in Price We Pay for the Sun, the final stanza employs a triplet to depict poverty as being the price that the indigenous people have to pay for the “sun girl” (26), which may be referencing a sunbathing tourist who is having an enjoyable experience in the island whilst the locals suffer due to poverty, disease and death. .

The imperative of “run come” shows the direction of the speaker’s thinking and how their mind-set has changed from one of overriding bitterness to one of acceptance. Yet the concluding message is one that causes the read to reflect – are we to take action by addressing this injustice, or do we run away from these problems, disappearing into the sunset?