KU UG Sem5 Unit-I: How happy is the little stone- By Emily Dickinson (Poem and Analysis)

 

Kakatiya University- UG English, Semester-V

 UNIT-I

How happy is the little stone-  By Emily Dickinson 

 

Poem

How happy is the little Stone
That rambles in the Road alone,
And doesn’t care about Careers
And Exigencies never fears—

Whose Coat of elemental Brown
A passing Universe put on,
And independent as the Sun
Associates or glows alone,
Fulfilling absolute Decree
In casual simplicity—

Explanation

About the poet: Emily Dickinson (1830-86) is one of the famous women writers of America. She spent all her life alone and she never got married. She never became famous in her lifetime because she did not publish any poems in her life time. Her themes include loneliness, depression, death and immortality. She frequently uses capital letters (to highlight particular words); and dashes (to indicate pause or break in thought) in her poems.  This poem is more cheerful than many of her famous poems. 

Background of the poem: Dickinson compares human life to a stone. We the humans face many difficulties and feel stress in day to day life, where as a stone is very happy throughout its life. In 'How happy is the little Stone, the stone stands in as a symbol for ideal happiness and a perfectly designed life without pressures.

Introduction: In the present poem 'How happy is the little Stone' Dickinson gives a human face to a stone. She compares her life to a little stone. All stones on this Earth are happy (we don’t find any stone which is unhappy!) but humans are unhappy.

A little stone rambles from one place to another place without any goal. It doesn’t care about career. No stone wanted to become an officer or entrepreneur or earn money in life. Though they do not have any goal, they are happy. We the humans are obsessed with material world and we set goals every day and yet we are unhappy. It states that people should be happy just being who they are. We must enjoy the time we have on this amazing world.

Stone don’t face any emergencies, it does not fear for anything. In-fact no species on earth is afraid of another species of its kind, but we humans are afraid of other humans in the name of war, power, oppression, and corruption.

All stones are similar in color (elemental brown), but humans have many colors such power, racism, color, creed, religion and many other beliefs. As a chameleon, we often changes our colors (we fight, cheat, steal, kill, harass).  We are always dependent on others, but the stone is independent as the Sun. We can’t live alone. We are living in groups, but we always fight. 

The stone follows the duties assigned to it, not more than that. As a stone, we are also created to follow the law of god or nature. But we became cleverest animals and started controlling all other animals and nature. We are even trying to change the rules of nature, reach space, creating cloned animals and inventing many new things which are harmful to nature.

Everything in this universe is not ours; it was not solely made for us. We are part of the universe but only a small part. We are just temporary passersby in the limitless and timeless passage of the universe. It's been here long before we ever came along and it will be here long after we are all dead and gone.

 Conclusion: In this simple poem, Emily Dickenson compared human life with a stone and tried to convey that we never think about a stone even for a second. While we are walking down a road, we kick the little stone without caring about it. We are all so blind that we just see what we want to see and not what's really there. So, she advises us to see the world from a different perspective and lead a happy life.

 The stones are happy because they don’t have life goals, they never fear in emergencies, they don’t change colors and they follow the rules of universe. But, we feel our life stressed; we always fear; we change our colors; we don’t obey the rules of the world; that is the reason, we are so unhappy.