Final Harvest

Essay by bigeric56University, Bachelor'sA-, April 2004

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Final Harvest

In Dickinson's Final Harvest, there are several themes throughout each of her poems. In the poems, "The Brain - is wider than the Sky-"(161) and "I felt a cleaving in my mind,"(not in the book) one main theme that is similar in both of these poems is the "mind." However, there is a contradiction. In the first poem, the speaker is saying that the mind is so big that it can "contain" such things as the sky and the ocean. In the second poem, the speaker is almost lost because she cannot collect her thoughts. The contradiction is that the mind can comprehend all things but the speaker cannot collect her thoughts.

In the first stanza of "The Brain - is wider than the Sky-"(161), the speaker states:

The Brain - is wider than the Sky -

For - put them side by side -

The one the other will contain

With ease - and You - besides -

"The Brain" or the human mind is wider than the Sky (the outer world) because the mind comprehends or "contains" almost everything in the Sky and the outer world.

The sky is used as a metaphor for boundless amounts of information because the sky is so constant and vast. The second stanza reads as follows:

The Brain is deeper than the sea -

For - hold them - Blue to Blue -

The one the other will absorb -

As Sponges - Buckets - do -

In this stanza, the speaker states that the mind is "deeper than the sea" because the brain can comprehend almost everything that is in the ocean and all bodies of water. The mind can "absorb" all this knowledge like a sponge can absorb water and hold it...