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Metaphorical Analysis of Snow Imagery

The document analyzes Emily Dickinson's poem about snow through its use of metaphors. It discusses how the snow is represented through the pronoun "it" and metaphors comparing it to flour, cloth, and lace. It examines metaphors like "leaden sieves" that describe the darkened sky and "alabaster wool" that portray the snow as soft yet crusty. Further metaphors like "even face" and "unbroken forehead" depict the smooth, flat surfaces. The harvested field is metaphorically described as a "summer's empty room." The snowflakes themselves are metaphorized as "artisans" weaving fleeces, veils and laces before their falling ceases, leaving their designs on

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Bahar Senotay
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4K views1 page

Metaphorical Analysis of Snow Imagery

The document analyzes Emily Dickinson's poem about snow through its use of metaphors. It discusses how the snow is represented through the pronoun "it" and metaphors comparing it to flour, cloth, and lace. It examines metaphors like "leaden sieves" that describe the darkened sky and "alabaster wool" that portray the snow as soft yet crusty. Further metaphors like "even face" and "unbroken forehead" depict the smooth, flat surfaces. The harvested field is metaphorically described as a "summer's empty room." The snowflakes themselves are metaphorized as "artisans" weaving fleeces, veils and laces before their falling ceases, leaving their designs on

Uploaded by

Bahar Senotay
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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1)The subject is snow, though nowhere is this subject named.

Instead, it is developed through a series of metaphors in which the literal term is represented by the pronoun "it." 2)The two metaphors of the fourth form in which the figurative term as well as the literal term is left unnamed can be explained as such: In lines 1-2, "It" is compared to flour, and in lines 17-18 to some kind of soft white cloth or lace (Queen Anne's lace?). 3)The "leaden sieves" refer to the darkened sky or clouds from which the snow is falling (a metaphor of the third form). But kitchen sieves were ordinarily (during Emily Dickinson's time) tinware; hence another metaphorical process is involved in the substitution of "leaden," with its connotations of heaviness and darkness in the weather, as opposed to the lighter, shinier connotations of tin. "alabaster wool" (3), "Wool" as a figurative term for snow suggests softness and whiteness, but the introduction of "alabaster" (dense white, fine-grained gypsum [white mineral used in manufacture of plaster]) as an adjective brings in an additional comparison, making the snow whiter and giving it a surface crustiness or hardness. "even face" (5), "Face" is an appropriate metaphor for a natural surface (even a dead metaphor in such phrases as "the face of a cliff"), but faces are seldom "even"--so this is a special face, a face compared to something having a smooth, flat surface. "unbroken forehead" (7), works in a similar way: this is an unwrinkled or unfurrowed forehead. "a summer's empty room" (14), The harvested fie1d of "stump and stack and stem" is metaphorically compared to a room once inhabited (before the harvest) by a personified "summer" but now "empty" (no longer filled with growing grain). "artisans" (19), are snowflakes, the ghostlike weavers of the fleeces, veils, ruffles, and laces. At the end of the poem the snowflakes stop falling, but their creation--the variegated designs of snow on the ground--remains.

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