Student Question
What is a critical analysis of Emily Dickinson's poem "I measure every grief I meet"?
Quick answer:
Emily Dickinson's poem "I measure every grief I meet" explores the speaker's habit of comparing her grief to others', questioning the intensity and reasons behind their suffering. The poem delves into themes of enduring pain, contemplating mortality, and the superficial nature of recovered smiles. It employs vivid imagery and allusions, particularly to Christ's crucifixion, to emphasize shared suffering. Unlike typical 19th-century poetry, it offers no solace in afterlife promises but finds comfort in shared human sorrow.
In this poem, the narrator compares the grief other people are suffering with her own, implying this is a hobby of sorts for her:
I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, eyes –
I wonder if It weighs like Mine –
Or has an Easier size.
In other words, the speaker wonders if other people's grief is as profound and intense as hers or if they suffer less.
The speaker goes on to wonder in stanza three if the other grief sufferers contemplate suicide:
could They choose between [life and death] –
It would not be – to die –
She then moves on to "note" that some sufferers come to smile again, but it seems a faded smile, an "imitation," perhaps like an "oil" painting.
In stanzas five and six, she discusses how long grief seems to last "Centuries" and then moves to the various reasons people...
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she observes suffer: the death of someone else, the grief of "Want" or not having one's material needs met, and the pain of "Despair."
The speaker ends by stating that while she cannot know what another person's sorrow is, this "Calvary" of pain, an allusion to Christ's suffering on the cross, gives her the comfort of knowing she is not alone. In fact, the suffering of some might be "like my own."
In a time before psychoanalysis, the poem speaks with raw honesty about the pain of grief. As always, Dickinson uses striking imagery drawn from everyday life to describe her subject. She condenses grief into an object that can be weighed; uses hyperbole by saying that grief lasts a thousand years, a way to describe how endless it can seem; and employs allusions to Christ's crucifixion at the end to bring home the depth of suffering.
The poem is longer than most of Dickinson's but equally as stark and direct in its evocation of emotion. Unlike much nineteenth century poetry, the speaker of this poem does not take comfort in the promise of resurrection or an afterlife but in the concept of the crucified Christ as a fellow sufferer. She does not attempt to gloss over the pain people feel but instead names and universalizes it.