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- An incident Emily Dickinson described speaks volumes about life within her home: “I never knew how to tell time by the clock till I was 15.
www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org › edward-dickinson-1803-1874-fatherEdward Dickinson (1803-1874), father - Emily Dickinson Museum
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Perhaps the best way to analyse and interpret Dickinson’s poem is to say that the poem is about a clock throughout, but that she is using this miniature grandfather clock (the very name of the clock inviting a comparison with humans, and with old age and death) as an extended metaphor for human life (and death).
An incident Emily Dickinson described speaks volumes about life within her home: “I never knew how to tell time by the clock till I was 15. My father thought he had taught me but I did not understand & I was afraid to say I did not & afraid to ask anyone else lest he should know” (L342b).
The “pendulum” (Line 11) of any timepiece refers to the weight that regulates the mechanism by moving backward and forward. Without this motion, the clock cannot tell time. Here, the “pendulum” (Line 11) can also indicate the tendency for someone to swing from one extreme to another, perhaps in this case the living and the dead.
“A Clock stopped—” is an 18-line poem written in 1861 by Emily Dickinson, an American poet who lived in New England during the 19th century. The poem employs an extended metaphor of a broken clock to discuss the inevitability and irreversible quality of death.
In Emily Dickinson’s poem “A Clock stopped,” the clock takes on a deeper meaning as it becomes a metaphor for the end of a life. The clock’s sudden stoppage is a jarring reminder of the finality of death and the abruptness with which it can occur.
To begin the poem, the speaker notes “A clock stopped—” (Line 1) but specifies this is not the clock in the home, clarifying it is “Not the Mantel’s” (Line 2). The location of the clock is unspecified, but the idea of the contrast put forth is that the timepiece is a larger, more epic clock. Since clocks have long been symbolic of ...
In these lines, Dickinson suggests that time's ceaseless movement can bring about profound changes, even rendering the most constant elements in life obsolete. The stopped clock symbolizes the end of time's influence, emphasizing the transformative nature of its absence.
