“I Cried at Pity — Not at Pain” by Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson does a great job at expressing her thoughts.  I think this poem is talking about a child passing and Emily putting herself in this child’s shoes because she feels dead inside.  She constructs this poem with some stanzas having every other line rhyme and some stanzas having no rhyme scheme whatsoever.  She has a good mix between strong descriptive words and short thoughts with simple words.

Emily, from what I know from Kristin Ozzello and various projects I’ve seen about her, she seems like such a sad person.  I would hate to feel dead when I was still alive.  That must be the worst feeling ever.  To feel like nothing in your life makes you feel alive.  Everyone has felt it, but hers seemed to go on for her whole life.  This reminds me of the book I am reading right now called The Color Purple.  In this book, the main character, Celie, has a life full of pain and suffering.  She could count the good days shes had on two hands, if even that, and has lived a full life of being treated like it didn’t matter if she was alive or not.  As the story goes on, it gets a little better, but not great.  The whole time I’ve been reading this book, all I have thought is how could someone live this kind of life and not go crazy?  It hurts my heart, as cheezy as that sounds.  I think of all the true stories just like Celie’s that happen every day.  It makes me sad that we live in a world where people could be so horrible to other people to make them feel dead inside.  Or even really dead.  It makes me really think if it is worth it to grow up and have a family and bring someone into this life that could be put in a situation where they could be a victim of the many horrible things that goes on in this day in age.

That last thought takes me into another thought.  Why does the news and media and everyone only advertise tragedies?  Nobody wants to turn on the news anymore because of all the bad things.  Why don’t we show the world how good the world is?  Its almost like saying that there is more evil in this world than good.  This has to stop somewhere. My boyfriend and I were talking and we figured out that he is a realist and I am an idealist.  This means he looks at facts and I still try to find the good in things.  I told him I didn’t think this was a bad quality, and he said he agrees and that we need more like me in this world to still have faith that good will be back in the lead someday.