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Yunzhi Li (Melissa)
Year 12
As Literature

In the poem “This World is not Conclusion”, the poet Emily Dickinson portrays her uncertainty
and questions towards the belief of afterlife in her religion. The poem has revealed her struggle
with doubts under a society where strict Christian beliefs were enforced. Dickson has conveyed
her state of ambivalence with her use of language in this poem, such as repetition, parallelism
and deviation.

Firstly, the poet has presented her understanding of afterlife directly with the use of punctuation
and with the frequency of verbs. She begins the poem with a strong statement “This World is
not Conclusion.” This line is the only sentence that ends with a full-stop which shows the poet’s
certainty of the belief that there are beings beyond the life of earth. With the following lines and
till the end of the poem, Dickinson repeatedly uses hyphens and midline commas that convey
hesitation and uncertainty. As if she is sure about the existence of life beyond but unable to
draw a conclusion. Next, the frequency of the verbs also increases as the poem progresses. It
demonstrates the idea that more questions develop as one goes deeper into the question of
afterlife. It is almost paradoxical that the title clearly states that “This World is not Conclusion”,
yet at the end, Dickinson hasn’t answered the questions that she drew out; there is no clear
conclusion to our existence beyond death.

Also, the lexical and grammatical deviation plays an important role in creating a sense of
mystery in the poem. Dickinson’s use of the noun “Tooth” is unexpected and odd with the
context of the poem. “Tooth” here is suggesting the pain and it is a universal feeling we
experience in life. Perhaps Dickinson is suggesting that the desire to find the truth about after is
as normal as events like toothache, the desire is embedded in humans, one after another
generation. The grammatical error in “Philosophy - don’t know” undermines theorists’ validity
and value. Similarly, the poem has various important nouns that have been capitalized,
however, the noun “scholars” is not capitalized. This again demeans the status of scholars and
academic learning.

Moreover, the poet has illustrated an opposition of two ideals - religion and academic
knowledge. The poet uses a semantic field of religion throughout the poem to directly highlight
her religious doubts. The field contains nouns like “Crucifixion,” “Faith”, “Pulpit”, and
“Hallelujahs''. It presents Dickinson’s thoughts and questions about the afterlife that is laid out in
the Bible. At the same time, the usage of words that contains religious meanings shows the
poet’s strong knowledge of religion and Christianity.

Dickson also demonstrates the academic knowledge that causes her uncertainty with the nouns
“Species”, “Philosophy,” “Riddle”, “ Sagacity” and “Scholars”. The noun, “Species”, connotes a
tone of Darwin's evolution. The scientific approach to life denies the presence of having a soul
that is common in many religions. The contradictory beliefs create a sense of tension in the
poem. On the other hand, the mention of academia here also reveals that scholars have not yet
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found an answer to afterlife. In that view, religion and academics are working towards the same
goal - to find evidence about the world after one dies.

Furthermore, the repeated structure and form of the poem have reinforced the contemplation of
what happens after death. The two lines “Invisible, as Music - But positive, as Sound” use
parallelism to create a sense of rhythm and rigidity. Music, can be heard without seeing, is used
here to compare to the belief of afterlife. One can not see music or sound, it’s an example of
containing knowledge without physical experience. Dickinson is suggesting that listening to
music is an entry point to understand afterlife. However, for the theory beyond death, we can
not receive any sensory experience thus a question is raised about how one believes the sense
of God or heaven when we can not experience it physically.

The following line “it beckons, and it baffles,” has created parallelism within one line. The two
phrases not only contain grammatical parallel, but they also have phonetic similarities. The
plosive alliteration shows Dickinson’s yearning to find the truth while having conflicting and
contradictory feelings towards it. Dickinson uses parallelism again in two lines “To guess it
puzzles scholars - To gain it, Men have borne. With the verb “to guess”, Dickson suggests that
religion is guesswork, that there is not yet a way to prove it. The poet connects both religion and
science, highlighting their failure to find evidence to prove their theories.

In all, the poem explores the issues of faith and doubts within Christianity and science. It has
shown Dickinson’s personal yet universal uncertainty about the world beyond death. She
conveys her ambivalence through her unique selection of words and phrases, lexis and patterns
within her language.