A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest

Caleb Burns

Mrs. Kent

English 3 (H)

6 October 2015

“A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest”

“Don’t judge a book by its cover” is a cliché phrase that warns that there might be more to a person than what he or she appears to be. Sometimes the person that is put on display for us to see is very different than the person inside, which is concealed from the eye. In her poem “A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest,” Dickinson writes of the hidden, inner struggles of those who appear to be strong. In this case, the individual’s perspective on their own heart is the most veritable and most important point of view of the heart’s true state. This is largely expressive of the Romantic era Dickinson wrote in, in which individual feelings were glorified.

“A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest” is dominated by the use of irony on a small, specific scale, and also on a large, general scale. Dickinson’s main objective in her poem is to expose the irony of the pain borne by those who appear strong, and she illustrates this point by filling the second stanza with metaphoric irony. The line “The trampled steel that springs” is ironic because steel is firm and immovable by nature, yet it forms a dynamic and elastic spring when trampled upon. Following this ironic statement, Dickinson employs a metaphor: “A cheek is always redder just where the hectic stings!” The hectic is a fever that induces flushed cheeks, which is deceiving because colored cheeks are supposed to be suggestive of good health. These lines are elucidative of Dickinson’s main theme, which is ironic in it of itself: “Mirth is the mail of anguish,” Dickinson claims. In other words, those who are suffering put on a mask of happiness to cover up their pain. The line is really a metaphor that compares a person’s false, positive aura with chainmail armor that protects its wearer from being exposed. Dickinson establishes a sense of irony here by contrasting the words mirth and anguish, which are two completely opposite feelings, and attributes them both to the same person. This idea of emotional ambiguity is symptomatic of a Romantic era in which direct, physical observation does not always provide truth. Instead, truth can only be found by looking introspectively – an individual need look no further than his or her own heart.

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