Life and death are universal themes for a reason. All people experience them in a variety of ways. Death invades our solitude. Life can bring us out of the depths. In “Memorials” by Emily Dickinson, remembering somebody after they are gone is a complex notion. In just five quatrains, her poem discusses the deceased through objects they left behind.

Analysis of “Memorials” by Emily Dickinson

In “Memorials,” Dickinson writes, “Death sets a thing significant / The eye had hurried by, / Except a perished creature /Entreat us tenderly.” She begins her poem this way and in so doing, reflects death as an object that becomes relevant to our understanding of mortality. What catches our eye reminds us of those we lost. Sometimes the object, much like a “thimble” or a book with annotations can remind us of a great deal from somebody’s life.

Furthermore, Emily Dickinson writes in “Memorials” that “The thimble weighed too heavy, / The stitches stopped themselves, / And then ‘t was put among the dust / Upon the closet shelves.” Here we again see how the thimble reminds us of something else entirely, and it carries with it a weight of memory. The light of memory lingers for the reader because they also see the hands that held the object. They are the hands of somebody who has died.

In the last stanza of the poem, Dickinson states, “Now, when I read, I read not, / For interrupting tears, / Obliterate the etchings / Too costly.” At this point, we know the emotional cost of finding such a relic. We tie these feelings to the object itself so that we can feel a moment of life a little longer. Maybe we are trying to remember a parent, or a grandparent; either way, the relic takes us back to their own memory and allows us pain and sadness, and catharsis.

Conclusion

Dickinson, who has written much about death, tells the reader that there is no immortality in the literal sense. In the same respect, we may live a long time, but we will always lose people in our lives. It’s the little things that remind us of that loss. Dickinson tells us that it could be a picture, an article of clothing, or even just a thimble. It’s these small gestures that tug at us emotionally, but they also remind us of the love we had and the love that still exists in our hearts.