A Bird came down the Walk—

by Emily Dickinson

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Who is the speaker in Emily Dickinson's poem "In the Garden"?

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The speaker in Emily Dickinson's poem "In the Garden" is unnamed, allowing readers to potentially associate the speaker with Dickinson herself. The speaker observes a bird in the garden and reflects on its graceful departure, using rich metaphors comparing its flight to oars dividing the ocean and butterflies swimming through the sky. However, it's important to note that the speaker's identity is not explicitly defined as Dickinson, inviting broader interpretive possibilities.

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Generally speaking, it is good advice to assume that the speaker of the poem is not the author. When we assume that the speaker, even when unnamed, is the poet him- or herself, we can often miss avenues for interpretation that might otherwise be available to us. For example, if the poet is a male, and we assume that the speaker of a poem is the poet and therefore also male, we may miss interpretive possibilities that exist if we consider that the speaker could be female. People have a tendency to assume that Dickinson is the narrator of her poems when another narrator is not directly specified and (as in this particular poem) it doesn't seem to do harm to make the assumption that the speaker could be her. The speaker's diction and use of metaphor seems to confirm that she or he is well read and likely not a child. However, in general, one should not leap to the conclusion that the author is the speaker simply because the speaker's identity is unspecified.

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In Emily Dickinson's poem In the Garden the speaker is unnamed, therefore the reader is free to associate the speaker of the poem with Dickinson herself. In this poem, Dickinson, as the speaker, is noting her observation of a bird in the garden. He departs the garden upon her offer of a crumb. Dickinson compares his flight to oars silently dividing the "too silver" ocean and to butterflies flying at noon through the ocean of the sky. She deepens her comparative metaphors by saying the bird "rowed him softer home," again through the metaphorical ocean of the sky, and the butterflies "leap" and "swim," though making no splashes ("plashless"), through their metaphorical ocean waters.

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