Ms

"I'm Nobody! Who are you?" Emily Dickinson

(#288 pg. 71)

In this poem Emily Dickinson claims she is a "nobody." She then asks if you are a "nobody" also. Now they are a pair of nobodies together. She tells you not to tell anyone because they would be banished. It would be boring to be a "somebody," she thinks. Then she compares being a public somebody to frogs in a swamp.

Dickinson used imagery to explain how being public is like being a frog. Frogs are similar to public figures, or some bodies, because they are constantly croaking to the swamp. The frogs are croaking, trying to make their own identities.

The form of this poem doesn't follow a certain rhyme scheme. In the first stanza, "you" and "too" rhyme creating an AABC scheme. The in the second stanza, "frog" and "bog" create an ABCB rhyme scheme. She also used dashes though out the poem to interrupt the flow by pauses.

I researched Dickinson and found out that she wasn't famous during her lifetime. She lived a secluded life from the public. She is writing about her life and how she saw things. Even though she wrote almost 1,800 poems, she only published 10 of them. She liked her privacy and didn't want to be famous. In the poem she considered being a "nobody" a luxury which is how she really feels. Being banished is like her being forced out of her secluded life she enjoyed. She wanted to be isolated from society and write her poems alone. She rarely had visitors or even went anywhere; she spent most of her time in her room alone. To be a "somebody", you are always busy trying to keep your name recognized by the public. Dickinson didn't want this for herself. The comparison of frogs to the public didn't exactly go together for me. She did this on purpose to surprise you in