E Block--Daniel on 435

I typed this in, so typos are mine...  --EC

The Madness of Conformity                                             Daniel Krane 9/8/11

In Emily Dickinson's poem "435," Dickinson warns of the twistedness of society, and the dangers of conformity.  Dickinson primarily uses two major techniques to drive home these points--parallelism and reversal.

In the beginning of the poem, Dickinson sets up the groundwork of discord, writing, "Much Madness is divinest Sense--/... Much Sense--the starkest Madness--" (lines 1, 3).  Clearly, Dickinson reworks the first line, and almost reflects the sentence, as if in a mirror.  THe reconstruction of the sentence, though, drastically changes the meaning of the line.  The lines call into question what is truly "mad" and what is "sense"? What is dismissed as folly or "madness" can often be the wisest choice, while what is commonly accepted as the best option or "sense" can truly be the wrong option.  YEt that much is plainly obvious from the text.  It is through Dickinson's strategy of reversal that a much stronger indictment of society comes out.  By having these two opposing standards of what is good and what is bad switched, Dickinson shows how literally backwards society is.  And yet, Dickinson goes further in engraining this message of reversal into these sentences.  In Line 3, she imbues the sound with reflection too--starting with an m-word and an s-word and ending with an s-word and then an m-word.  Through word choice, as well as sounds, Dickinson presents a world where everything is inverted and wrong.

Dickinson also manages to express meaning through parallelism.  The poem divides itself ino two parts--the first (lines 1-3), where "a discerning Eye" sees what is wrong in society, while the second (lines 4-8) has a "Majority" (line 4) pronouncing judgment on people.  These two views are paired together as a rhyme ("eye" and "Majority"); both are short, similar lines, and yet the Majority perspective is clearly dominant, covering 5 lines of the poem to the Eye's 3.  Dickinson suggests that in poetry, as in life, the majority rules despite how misguided they might be.  Further parallelism exists in lines 6 and 7, "Assent--and you are sane--/Demur--you're straightway dangerous--".  From the first words being opposites, to the use of two dashes in the same places, these two sentences were clearly modeled as pairs, sort of like two sides of the same coin.  On the "good" side, if you fall in line, you are approved of in society.  If you don't, then you are "dangerous."  These sentences themselves conform to a pattern, both (from the perspective of the "Majority") promoting conformism through words and structure.  And yet, the 6th and 8th lines are paired together in a rhyme scheme, "Assent--and you are sane--/...And handled with a Chain--". Sane and Chain are directly connected, showing that those who are "sane" (who assent to the general will, or conform) are willingly enslaving themselves by holding back on's true feelings.  ANd as the closing line in the poem, this is the message Dickinson chooses to strike home most of all--that, in the end, conformism only harms yourself.

Dickinson lives in a confused world.  She pleads for people not to fool themselves with popular "assent" just to fit in, because in the end, it is only the "discerning Eye" who can see things for what they truly are.  That eye rests inside everyone,  within free will.