I need to write an analysis of her poem. Please help!?

Question

THE MYSTERY OF PAIN.
Emily Dickinson

Pain has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.

It has no future but itself,
Its infinite realms contain
Its past, enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.


Poems by Emily Dickinson
Life

Answer 1

The first stanza of the poem talks about how pain remembers the past. The second stanza talks about how pain looks at the future.

But, of course, pain is not a creature with a mind and a memory. It cannot really "recollect" or "perceive" anything. It can't think about the past or the future. It can't be "enlightened." It's not a monarch ruling a "realm." So Dickinson is using the poetic technique known as personification. She is attributing human characteristics to something that doesn't actually have those characteristics. When she talks about what pain thinks and feels, she's really saying something about how we human beings think and feel when we're in pain. She could be talking about either physical or emotional suffering. Do you see anything in the poem that makes you think she's talking about one kind of pain more than the other? (Maybe not. There's not necessarily just one right answer to that question.)

According to the poem, how we think about our own pain? Does the poem say that we find physical suffering or psychological depression easy to endure because we know it's only temporary? Does it say we remember a time in the past when we weren't hurting and look ahead to a time in the future when the pain will be gone? Or does it say something else? Whatever you think it's saying, find specific words or phrases or lines in the poem to support your opinion.