the Thing with Feathers

The poem “Hope is the Thing with feathers” by Emily Dickinson is a typical example of a poem in which the meaning is open to the reader's interpretation. The poem is ambiguous as it can have a positive and hopeful meaning, as well as a depressing one. It can be seen as full of hope, which  can be found anywhere in the world, however one can also see it as dark and sinister like other poems by the author, where hope may exist but doesn’t reveal itself to the author. It is up to the reader, his thinking and reading, to interpret the poem.

The poems positive interpretation tends to be the first one to come to mind. Here the poem described hope as the “thing with feathers” which “sings the tune without the words and never stops at all”. Hope is compared to a bird, which symbolizes freedom. This bird of hope sings a tune without words, which could be whatever anyone who hears needs it to be in order to feel hopeful. The most significant part of this is the last line: “And never stops-at all”. This gives the idea that hope never dies Emily Dickinson used the format of the dash in the last sentence to empathise the “at all”. Also there is a sort of repetition in this sentence as it first says “never stops” which is a strong point on its own, but is then reinforced with “at all”. This is just one example of the ways that the poem could be interpreted positively.

The last stanza of the poem is the most ambiguous. It says:

“I’ve heard it in the chillest land-

And on the strangest Sea-

Yet-never- in Extremity,

It asked a crumb -of me.

The is a positive and a negative interpretation to this. The positive one is that hope can be found even in the darkest places, and even in the worst cases it is free. However there is a different meaning to this as well. This meaning is linked to the author's life. Emily Dickinson stayed at home for most of her life. This must have been hard for her and it could be why she gave so many of her poems a second more sinister meaning. The one in this poem is that she may have heard of hope being in the darkest places, however even in her worst moments the bird of hope did not come to her. The last line is ambiguous; One: it could mean that the bird of hope was never asking for a crumb as reward thus hope is free, but Two: as feeding a bird with crumbs is a pleasant thing, one could see this that hope never came to her to let her feed it and thus have a part of it. Meaning that Emily Dickinson never found the hope that others told her about. It is up to the reader to chose one of the two interpretations for this poem.