Reflection: Emily Dickinson: Heart, We Will Forget Him

The poem, "Heart, We Will Forget Him!" was a very interesting poem. It was about how Emily lost a man in her life. She was basically making a plan with her heart about how they were going to cope with their loss. She was speaking to her heart as if it was an external force. She was telling her heart that it was going to have to forget about the warmth of her heart. She knew that her heart was going to miss the warmth of this man. Because she was living in seclusion, she knew that she was not just going to randomly run into him on the street because she never leaves the comfort of her own house. I think that Emerson and Thoreau had similar ideas to those of Emily Dickinson. They were all individualistic. This means that they all valued the individual over society and others. I can definitely relate this idea to Emily Dickinson because she was so individualistic that she stayed at her house every hour of everyday. This shows me that she cared more about herself than society because she did not ever care to go explore any of the things that society had to offer. In the poem at the end she tells her heart that whenever it is feeling down, it can just remember him (Dickinson). This is kind of ironic because the title says that she and her heart are going to forget him. The idea of the poem kind of goes with the philosophies of Thoreau. He said that he was not one to conform. This poem was written about the loss of a man. Because this poem was written, it tells me that she had a hard time making the adjustment when he was gone. Dickinson also had a simple way of living. She was home all of the time, so she did not really have a complex lifestyle whatsoever. Although Dickinson was more realistic in getting to the point of her stories than Emerson and Thoreau, they did have some similarities in writing style.

Dickinson, Emily. "Heart, We Will Forget Him!" The Literature Network. Web. 12 Mar. 2012. <http://www.online-literature.com/dickinson/829/>.

Diamond, Marie Josephine, ed. "realism." Encyclopedia of World Writers, 1800 to the Present. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2011. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= GEWW480&SingleRecord=True