A Day

Emily Dickinson's 'A Day' illustrates the rising and setting of the sun in a literal sense, contrasting life with death.

The poem begins with the persona—an anonymous child—confidently recounting how the sun rises and what happens next. This speaker expresses joy at seeing birds, hills, and the rising sun, demonstrating the child's innocence about the world. He or she just sees the beauty of life.

In terms of metaphor, the poem's first stanzas depict the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

As the poem proceeds, the child loses confidence when depicting a sunset. He/she does not have enough knowledge to describe it. Nonetheless, this speaker describes the purpling of the sky as the sun sets, until it becomes dark. This represents the inactivity connected with death. It also demonstrates how little understanding living beings have about death.

Some Important Questions

1. What, according to the speaker, is a day?

ans: Emily Dickinson's 'A Day' is a lyrical poem about sunrise and sunset, in which day represents life. A day represents life, with the sun rising symbolizing birth and the sun setting symbolizing death. It also illustrates the beauty of existence and the ambiguity of death in a philosophical perspective. Sunrise and sunset are described in 'A Day.' It also represents the path from life to death in a symbolic manner.

2. What makes this poem lyrical and sonorous? Discuss.

ans: Emily has used her magic talents to create this poetry lyrical, sonorous, and beautiful. Written in the first person narrative, the poem is lyrical in the sense that it expresses the author's personal feelings or emotions. In lyrical poetry, the initial pronoun "I" indicates the poetic persona. This is a small poem in which the author expresses her unique experience of viewing the sunrise. Sonorous means being full of sound and tightly filled with rhymes or phrases. Several things influence a poem's musical and melodic quality. The employment of sound strategies like alliteration, assonance, rhyme, and rhythm enhances the musicality of this poetry.

3. Who are the target audience of the speaker? Why?

ans: The audience is the group of people for whom a writer writes or composes a poem. The poem depicts the world through the perspective of an innocent infant. It appears lovely and miraculous at first, but it becomes mysterious towards the conclusion. The speaker is telling the sunrise as the opening line states, "I'll tell you how the sun rose." From this perspective, we may say that the target audience is other youngsters who have missed out on seeing this lovely sunrise because they woke up late. When we evaluate the poem philosophically, we see that the entire human race is the target audience. The magnificent sunrise represents the start of life, the entire day is a journey through life, and the sun's setting depicts death.