F Block--Jacob Dana on 435

Jacob Dana

American Lit

            Poem #435 by Emily Dickinson was written in 1862. In America, this was a time of extreme turmoil and violence, highlighted by the Civil War. During these uncertain times, many people began to question the very society they lived in. It was brother against brother. Never before had America gone through such a large internal conflict, and needless to say this stirred up some strong political views throughout the country. This is why Emily Dickinson’s poem #435 is describing her feelings on the American Civil War. 

            During the Civil War, it was commonplace, practically necessary, for any and every average member of society to go off and fight for either the Confederacy or the Union. When Dickinson says, “Much Madness is divinest Sense,” it can be interpreted as her explaining that, yes, it’s extremely dangerous and mad for these young men to be fighting for their lives against their own countrymen, but it’s for a good cause, and it certainly is valiant. Dickinson is saying that these men are mad in a certain sense of the word, but they are the ones who really understand things, and have what she calls, “Much Sense.” And what she refers to as, “the Majority” in this interpretation would have to be that most of the men would be fighting in this war.  In this case, she’d be talking about the Union soldiers only. The Union Army was also larger than the Confederate, so they’d be the overall majority in the war. These men have to have the “starkest Madness” to be able to survive this extremely difficult time. One definition of ‘stark’ is “impossible to avoid,” meaning that these soldiers weren’t necessarily “mad” on their own account, they were needed to fight this war. It was not a choice of theirs. The other definition of ‘stark’ is “physically strong, powerful.” Using both of these definitions, Dickinson is strongly defending the Union soldiers. 

            Also relating to the Civil War could be Dickinson’s use of the line “In this, as All, prevail.” Here, she could be pointing out with the capitalized “All” that this country needs to come together as a whole to figure out this problem between the Union and the Confederacy. This Civil War can only be solved as one country, one Union, needing those southern states not to secede. Based on this, she would definitely be against the secession of the southern states. With her next line, saying that if a person agrees with this theory, they are sane. Therefore this would mean that the “straightway dangerous” people were the Southerners attempting to secede from the Union. In the Northeast, namely Massachusetts, her birthplace, it’s assumed that Dickinson would be in support of the Union side of the war. So, naturally, she’d say that the only “sane” people would be the ones on the Union side.

            The last line of the poem, “And handled with a chain,” talks about those “dangerous” people who “demurred” from the Union. This detail highlights the capture of Confederate soldiers during the war. Here, they’d be held in chains in a prisoner-of-war camp. Even for such a short poem, she doesn’t sound too sympathetic for the Confederate side. She could be expressing previously unseen political fire using her most powerful weapon of all, the poem.

            Emily Dickinson was truly a historian in this sense. This simple eight-line poem really is almost her rhetoric, or her views on the Civil War as it was happening. As she was such an introverted person, this could be one of few documents that truly describe her political views.