I'm Nobody by Emily Dickinson

I'm Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too? Then there's a pair of us! Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know! How dreary – to be – Somebody! How public – like a Frog – To tell one's name – the livelong June – To an admiring Bog!

LAST

L = literary tools: two stanzas (quatrains), internal rhyme, punctuation (dashes, exclamation points), capitalization (Nobody, they'd), simile (like a Frog), metaphor (admiring Bog), symbolism (the livelong June)

A = Naive or ironic? Frightened or excited? Disdainful or envious?

S = After "too": asks a question, the answer is understood, speaker becomes anxious,

becomes more pensive in the second stanza

T = The Price of Being in Society, the Pleasure of Alienation,

the Superiority of Inner Life to Public Life

"Dickinson famously lived her life in seclusion, if not exile. She wrote, ". . . I do not cross my father's ground to any House or town." The story goes that when ill her doctor had to stand in the doorway, observing her, fully clothed, across the room. Friends had to talk to her through a door left ajar. Someone else addressed her envelopes. She did not engage the world -- in person. She lived a quiet, invisible life. In her lifetime she was virtually unknown as a poet. She knew she was considered a "nobody" and she defiantly took on that identity with pride and panache. "How dreary to be Somebody." "Public" was literally a dirty word to her--a bog. Yet she yearned to be famous, to be immortal, to matter utterly to us, to be "great, Someday," as a poet. Her poetry chronicles her struggle for an identity of distinction. I think of "They shut me up in Prose/As when a little Girl/they put me in the Closet/because they liked me still." (Moss berg)

Works Cited

"I'm Nobody! Who Are You?" Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 19 May 2015.

Melani, Lilia. "I'm Nobody! Who Are You?" I'm Nobody! Who Are You? N.p., n.d. Web. 19 May 2015.

Mossberg, Barbara. "I'm Nobody! Who Are You?" The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, n.d. Web. 19 May 2015.

"Response to "I'm Nobody! Who Are You?"" Response to "I'm Nobody! Who Are You?" N.p., n.d. Web. 19 May 2015.