LitWit Challenge 2.2: Life like a loaded gun.
Because the Oscars will be handed out today and because we’ve been reading Dostoevsky, the winner of the second week of the second series of the Weekly LitWit Challenge will receive these:
The Pevear/Volokhonsky translation of two short novels by Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Double and The Gambler (the most harrowing, intense account of an addiction I have ever read) and Jay Parini’s novel of the last year of Leo Tolstoy’s life, The Last Station (the film adaptation of which is nominated for Oscars).
As to the challenge itself, I thought we’d do poetry. To decompress after Demons, I’ve been noshing on a bunch of books including John LeCarre’s excellent, excellent thriller The Little Drummer Girl. As in Demons, people drop like flies; unlike Demons they do not make ten-page speeches before expiring. The Little Drummer Girl reminded me of this poem by Emily Dickinson.
My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –
In Corners – till a Day
The Owner passed – identified –
And carried Me away –
And now We roam in Sovereign Woods –
And now We hunt the Doe –
And every time I speak for Him –
The Mountains straight reply –
And do I smile, such cordial light
Upon the Valley glow –
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let its pleasure through –
And when at Night – Our good Day done –
I guard My Master’s Head –
‘Tis better than the Eider-Duck’s
Deep Pillow – to have shared –
To foe of His – I’m deadly foe –
None stir the second time –
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye –
Or an emphatic Thumb –
Though I than He – may longer live
He longer must – than I –
For I have but the power to kill,
Without–the power to die–
This week’s LitWit Challenge: Interpret this poem in 500 words or less. Tell me what it means to you personally. There is no one right answer; the prize goes to the entry that best explains why the speaker’s life is like a loaded gun. The more visceral the answer, the better.
You have until 11.59pm of Saturday, March 13, 2010, to post your answer in Comments. We trust that it is your own original interpretation and not cut-and-pasted from somewhere, or worse, the drivel we write to please and flatter teachers. Start loading those lives.
The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by our friends at National Bookstore. The Double/The Gambler and The Last Station are available at National Bookstores.
Koosi: I have an answer, but I won’t tell.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
March 8th, 2010 at 06:23
Emily Dickinson had issues with her mother who was neither affectionate nor educated enough to earn her admiration. Her father, however, encouraged his kids to learn, though he didn’t want his daughters to be too educated as to be considered freaks during these times. The books she read were mostly written by men. She also her brother, whom she depended on more for maternal affection. In her later years she came to value critiques on her work by male friends. Many even believe she is gay — again, identifying with male sexual attraction to female rather than the accepted role of women during that time. Her letters to eventual sister-in-law Susan Gilbert is proof. Thus we can say Dickinson admired, respected, and had been empowered and comfortable with the masculine influences in her life.
On the other hand, the very same influences, including the restrictions on women foisted by what was acceptable then, also stifled and controlled her. She could write, but was Victorian society (dictated by man) accepting of a woman writer? What she might have felt for Sue Gilbert — by many accounts a mewling, rampallian wretch — was sexual passion, but say she likes another girl – would society have been accepting then? This probably figured hugely in her already divided nature. She craved affection was fascinated by life enough that her poems teem with insights to human nature but didn’t like to mingle because people she easily drained her (introvert), she respected and resented death at the same time.
So her life as a gun. She has the gifts, the ammo, to make it in the world, and yet because she is a woman, her “life stood”. The hunter may be the patriarchal society, the men in her life, or her muse. I wonder if she considers men her muse? Her letters about her work have always been to men. They “hunt the Doe” – why doe and not the stag, the better-looking head trophy – they pursue, control, stifle womanhood. When she “speaks for him”, extols him, society echoes the sound of her gunfire. She enjoys camaraderie (“such cordial light”), but knows its debilitating effects on one nature (feminine?) as a “Vesuvian face had let its pleasure through.” The next verses express her staunch loyalty, standing by this masculine pal/influence she so favors.
The last verse is the most interesting to interpret. “Though I than he may longer live” makes sense literally as a hunter may die while a gun could still be used until damaged. Then again it’s something or someone older than herself. Last line’s literally the gun, which can kill but cannot die. But she may also mean she is merely a tool to be utilized, and alluding to Tennyson’s Tithonus which referred to young mortals as “men who have the power to die.” Maybe she’s saying she has the gift, but without the gender and youth. Which might have pissed her off. Which was also why she’s like a loaded gun.
March 8th, 2010 at 09:36
Missing words and grammar errors. :(
March 8th, 2010 at 14:12
Life, in general, is a loaded gun.
It’s a simple cause and effect routine. Every event in your life, every decision that you make out of that event, has a corresponding reaction.
And pulling the trigger, just like any other form of decision making, has its corresponding outcome.
If you’re lucky, or if you’ve calculated your actions, then happiness can be from a warm gun.
If you haven’t calculated the risks of your action, then something bad happens.
March 9th, 2010 at 07:36
Hmm. It’s funny how all of the online interpretations say that this poem’s about marriage, when to me it’s obviously about Religion (as only Ms Dickinson can capitalize).
The persona’s life has been one of standing in corners, that is, not realizing her potential (her ‘Loadedness’), until the good Lord came round and identified her. This part I think is crucial to differentiating the Owner from a Husband. God called us by name, and we are His. (Whereas the Husband calls one by name, and he wants Beer.)
So they go a-roaming. There’s really no point to God hunting deer, I think, besides the fact that he has a gun. I’m guessing this is Old Testament Yhwh? Although on closer reading, these two stanzas might imply a closer connection with nature. Doing God’s word and chatting with the mountains are equivalent. (Yes, I’m aware that the ‘reply’ is the gunshot echoing.) She even fancies her light Vesuvian.
For some reason, in this stanza I imagine them to be sleeping in the woods. Maybe because they don’t have pillows to share. But all the same, the image is one of discomfort, which is pretty much a cross that every Christian bears (pun intended). Also I can’t decide whether God is sleeping next to the gun or lying ON THE GUN, which makes no sense at all, and wonderful sense, at the same time.
Of course there’s a token stanza on God’s foes. They probably don’t really die; she converts them. Or perhaps she shoots them dead, like she did the Doe. No point in having mixed metaphors.
Now for the kicker:
>> Though I than He – may longer live
My faith may not always be strong
>> He longer must – than I –
He’ll have to convince me
>> For I have but the power to kill,
Because all I know is my life and my work
>> Without–the power to die–
And not what comes after.
March 10th, 2010 at 13:50
Our lives have meaning and purpose. To some, the “telos” of our being is about doing the will of a supreme being. To others, it is to find happiness. To a few, it’s about the happiness of an other. Regardless of the end in sight, the fact is that there is an end. There is a “telos”, a goal that we seek. A life fully lived is a life with an end in mind.
Like a loaded gun meant to shoot, our lives have intentions. We are gripped, not by a marksman, but by this goal that seeks to point the barrels of our being to that ultimate goal, whatever it may be. An unloaded gun is useless and so are we, unless we fill ourselves with whatever it is that empowers as to live (God’s grace? Love? Ambition?).
A driven life would stand guard to the desires of the heart – like a loyal sentry watching over its master. The enemies of our dreams are also our enemies. We seek to vanquish them for they hinder us from being fully ourselves. It is only in trying to remove all these impediments that we fully realize our telos in life. For ironically, life will always be an impediment for it always has its limitations. A gun has only so much bullet in it. It has only so much range. But it is in the emptying of the barrels, with the target on sight, that we fully realize the telos of this loaded gun.
March 10th, 2010 at 13:56
Maybe what Emily Dickinson wants to say is that God gave us the ability to enjoy life, but he is the only one who has the right to take that away by means of dying. Life is a loaded gun because anytime we can pull the trigger and die, but that doesn’t mean we’re dead. Only God will decide whether we really are dead, and until then, we only in violation of God’s sixth commandment, “thou shall not kill.”
Hence, Dickinson wants to remind her readers that God has given us a lot to do in this earth and that we should enjoy it. One day he’ll pull that trigger and before we know it, we’re already dead.
March 13th, 2010 at 13:39
The speaker is Rage, or Violence, Destruction. It is like a Loaded gun who is ready to shoot to kill, without missing once it locks on a target. It pulls the trigger not to injure or to maim, but to kill – the poem makes it clear and repeats this several times. Like the Loaded Gun unseen and dormant, Rage/Destruction resides in each one of us, but only activates and does damage when we pick it up, like when the Owner/Master took the gun hunting.
The Sovereign Woods could be the status quo full of rules that we rebel against, or it could an internal landscape. In both cases, with Rage we inevitably destroy something beautiful and defenseless such as a Doe – signifying innocence, peace. Once we succumb to Rage, we lose inner peace and innocence – we could not go back, the very act is a message that we do not even have to speak – hence the loaded gun speaks for its master, the language of violence leaves a trail of death, like gunshots echoed by the mountains.
And once we pull that trigger, it is not easy to go back: a person with a loaded gun knows no guilt , it could be an act of self-destruction, retaliation, or rebellion. It does not go back to sleep or rest as it was before the Master found it. Even when the Master already sleeps it hovers and guards the Master’s head – it may mean it is a constant threat, as in literally a gun on the head, or figuratively as in one’s head filled with violence/destruction, even in sleep, in unconsciousness. The reasons we take up the loaded gun are different, but one thing remains: the gun has the power to kill, not the power to die. In this it makes clear the possibility of a spiral of violence, the certainty that Man will die and the Gun will live on, and the hope that for all these the wielder of the gun might live longer before the gun, another gun, comes for him, to enjoy the fruits of his rebellion, or to survive the cycle of violence.
March 14th, 2010 at 00:05
The figuring (no pun intended) of the gun in the poem made me rush (or at least my brain) to the conclusion that it is about simmering violence, anger, or at least aggression. But then that would be too obvious for a crypt such as this, I thought. It may have something to do with aggression but not in that sense—it is about at least the “aggression” to take on life, “drive” or “an active stance in life, we call sometimes. Ultimately, poem is about an active responsibility for our lives and happiness or whatever we may want to get out of it and what may amount of it (happiness or otherwise). We are the guards to our lives and our quarries in life against anything that may come between us and those (To foe of His – I’m deadly foe -/None stir the second time -/On whom I lay a Yellow Eye -/Or an emphatic Thumb -). We have an easy option out (a soft duck feather pillow, perhaps) but in the end it’ll feel much better to take the active stance. Besides, it is what will keep us alive (And when at Night – Our good Day done -/I guard My Master’s Head ).
March 14th, 2010 at 00:10
Problematic internet connection. Trying again with some corrections I realized late i had to make.
The figuring (no pun intended) of the gun in the poem made me rush (or at least my brain) to the conclusion that it is about simmering violence, anger, or at least aggression. But then that would be too obvious for a crypt such as this, I thought. It may have something to do with aggression but not in that sense—it is about at least the “aggression” to take on life, “drive” or “an active stance in life, we call it sometimes. Ultimately, poem is about an active responsibility for our lives and our happiness or whatever we may want to get out of it and what may amount of it (happiness or otherwise). We are the guards to our lives and our quarries in life against anything that may come between us and those (To foe of His – I’m deadly foe -/None stir the second time -/On whom I lay a Yellow Eye -/Or an emphatic Thumb -). We have an easy option out (a soft duck feather pillow, perhaps) but in the end it’ll feel much better to have taken that active stance. Besides, it is what will keep us alive (And when at Night – Our good Day done -/I guard My Master’s Head ).