It is assumed by the reader that a bird is the embodiment of hope when Emily Dickinson states, "…that could abash the little bird," and because of this an important question to ask is why Dickinson chooses a bird to be the symbol of hope in her poem: "‘Hope' is the thing with feathers—" (7). Each metaphor in Dickinson's work presents another physical aspect of birds that can be paralleled to the spiritual effects that hope has on a human being. These physical aspects include the ability to fly, the resilient ability to sing even through the stormiest of weather, and the inability of birds to communicate through words or other unambiguous interactions. The physical characteristics of birds metaphorically illustrate the difficulty experienced when trying to express hope in terms of an abstract feeling, and the effectiveness of a physical parallel in representing an abstract idea.
Many similes arise from the first metaphor of the feathers: "Hope is the thing with feathers"......

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Title: Emily Dickinson Essay
Approximate Word Count: 928
Approximate Pages: 4 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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