Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church Essay Example

narrator to go against that tradition made me change my thoughts.

At that moment, I had swayed more towards the idea of the narrator practicing her religion twice. Once on Sunday in church and also practicing in the peace and quiet of her own backyard in her orchard and the wildlife. However, I further studied this poem and came to the realization that my idea of the narrator practicing her religion twice was not the message Dickinson was trying to send. I went back to my original interpretation which stated that the poem was about a woman not going to Sunday church and instead practicing herself in the comfort of her own home.

People feel more secure in their own home and can better relate to their surroundings. Unlike most people who wear the “Sunday best” to church, the narrator feels much more spiritual wearing just her “wings”. The narrator expresses the glory found in nature through her wings which are symbolic of what God has given her. Instead of the church bells ringing her sexton, previously stated as the bobolink, sings. In the last stanza, it is said that a noted clergyman, God, preaches to her directly through her life.

Instead of interrupting life to go to church she is going to live her life at home where she can get to heaven just as easily. The process needed to fully understand this poem was indeed a very long and drawn out. I thought about many different possible scenarios. Finally, my very last interpretation of Dickinson’s poem was as follows: the narrator chooses to not attend the traditional Sunday church service

but instead go out to her orchard and speak to god directly. She believes the things found in nature such as the birds and orchards work just fine as the speaker.

The narrator says she has a song bird that will do just fine in replacing the choir. A simple orchard reveals natural beauty instead of a man-mad dome inside a church. Throughout the poem Dickinson suggest that traditional church has become to materialistic and people fail to see the beauty of God that is present on earth. The narrator believes you do not have to attend church to be spiritual and that common practice can be done in a peaceful place such as the orchard in her yard. The last two lines of the poem state, “So instead of getting to Heaven, at last- / I’m going, all along” (Dickinson 639).

I interpreted this as the long journey to heaven has become a huge part of her life. It is not just a look into the future, but a continuous look in the present. The symbols Dickinson uses in this poem are by far the highlight of this short piece of poetry. In the first stanza, a bobolink and orchard are used to replace things that modern churches value as sacred and holy. Those natural occurrences are used by Dickinson to show her love for nature. More examples of this are shown in the second stanza. The narrator uses her own “sexton” to call her holly time instead of a brass bell to call church service.

This is important to analyze as yet another natural occurrence that highly defines the authors

writing style. All in all, Emily Dickinson’s poem “Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church” was a bit confusing the first few times it was read. It took many times interpreting it and going through line by line to fully understand it. After researching the time period, finding definitions for unknown words, and reading and rereading the poem many times I came up with a solid understanding of this piece of poetry.