18 pages • 36 minutes read
Emily DickinsonAfter great pain, a formal feeling comes
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1929A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Christ
The appearance of Jesus Christ occurs in the opening stanza: “The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’ / And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before?’” (Lines 3-4). The speaker capitalizes He, and the capital pronoun, along with the context, indicates that “He” (Line 3) is Jesus Christ. One interpretation presents Christ as a symbol of grandiosity. The person in pain connects their pain to the hurt Christ suffered on the crucifix. Though the person in pain is an ordinary person, and their pain isn’t because they’re sacrificing themselves for the redemption of humanity, the intensity of their pain makes them feel like they’ve become an exceptional, godlike figure. The pain minimizes their modesty, and the person, alienated from their typical human status, puts themselves on the same level as a martyred god. The identification with Christ brings the pain into the present. As the person associates with Christ, His pain (the crucifixion) didn’t occur on April 3, AD 33 but in the present, when the person first felt their “great pain” (Line 1).
A more positive interpretation links Christ to a symbol of comfort. The person in pain thinks of Christ and realizes that they’re not the only one to experience torment. If Christ can bear the agony of the crucifixion, then the person can survive their respective struggle. The person doesn’t think of themselves as Jesus, but they use Christ as a model for navigating their separate pain. The faith in Christ makes His crucifixion seem recent because Jesus is always in the person’s thoughts.
The “Hour of Lead”
The “Hour of Lead” (Line 10) represents a key turning point in the poem. The diction suggests that the time has come for the person in pain to make a choice. The word “hour” links to time and the term “lead” suggests that the person must do something about the stark weight (the pain) they carry. The phrase begins Stanza 3, and by the end of the final stanza, there’s a resolution. The “Hour of Lead” (Line 10) produces “the letting go” (Line 13). During the time frame, the person in pain has freed themselves from their respective struggle, so there’s a causality, with the “Hour of Lead” (Line 10) acting as the catalyst for the denouement.
At the same time, the turning point is puzzling, as the person in pain can turn in multiple directions. The “Hour of Lead” (Line 10) can lead the person to “outliv[e]” (Line 11) their pain and continue with their life. Conversely, the “Hour of Lead” (Line 10) can represent an end to the person’s life. Here, the person lets go of their pain by letting go of their life, which they could no longer separate from their respective trauma. Whether the person lives or dies, the “Hour of Lead” (Line 10) serves as the impetus for their fate.
Objects and Body Parts
The steady stream of body parts, things, and objects symbolizes the alienation and dissociation of the person in pain. The poem never portrays the person as a complete entity. The person who’s suffering doesn’t have nerves, but they become their “Nerves” (Line 2). Similarly, a person in agony doesn’t have a heart, but they are their “Heart” (Line 3). As the struggling person becomes fragmented, their identity becomes reducible. They don’t feel like a complex person with multiple parts. Instead, they feel like one specific part.
The array of objects demonstrates how a distressed person can identify with things outside of their body. They can feel “mechanical” or “Wooden” (Lines 5, 6). That is, they can experience lifelessness and the absence of consciousness. Alienated from their feelings, they feel like crystal “Quartz” or “stone” (Line 9). The poem suggests that the person in pain feels like anything but themselves. The “Freezing persons” (Line 12) advance the symbolism. The person in pain isn’t experiencing hypothermia. What they’re going through is less tangible, yet their disassociation prompts them to pair themselves with the freezing people as a way to make their pain finite and palpable.
Related Titles
By Emily Dickinson
