19 pages • 38 minutes read
Dreams
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Literary Devices
Sonnet Form and Meter
Although Helen Hunt Jackson maintained a 40-year friendship with Emily Dickinson, whom she first met growing up in Amherst, Massachusetts, “Dreams” reveals the fundamental difference between the two poets. Despite discussing similar subjects—Christian assurance, the beauty of nature, the struggle to find love and companionship, the sorrow of loneliness, and the terrifying reality of mortality—Jackson practiced disciplined poetic forms that reflected her grounding in the classic expressions of British poetry, while Dickinson experimented with idiosyncratic forms that outright rejected these inherited structures.
In “Dreams,” Jackson uses the familiar poetic form of the sonnet, incorporating the traditional 14-line construction that dates back to the Renaissance: The opening eight lines (called the octave) pose the problem (in this case, the troubling dreams of the speaker), and the closing six lines (the sestet) suggest a viable solution (an eternal rest that will free the speaker from this agony).
Jackson executes the lines in iambic pentameter. Each line (with some subtle variation to avoid monotony) has five two-beat units (DUH-duh). That patterning allows for ear-friendly recitation, encouraged by the tight (and entirely anticipated) rhyme pattern: ABBAABBA CDDCC.
Consonant and Vowel Manipulation
The poem’s cadence is related to the lullaby, sending the reader/listener to sleep. However, the poem is about the difficulty that the speaker finds in sleep due to the dreams haunted by the “[m]ysterious shapes” (Line 1) that represent past sorrows and painful memories. The poem thus is in conflict with itself: Its sonic construction, the weave of vowels and consonants, encourages what the speaker cannot enjoy—the soft escape of sleep.
First, the poet enhances that nocturnal experience using a variety of liquid vowels, particularly long “o” and long “e” sounds. Lines cannot be read quickly or rushed, as recitation lingers on these vowels. In addition, the poem uses this rich “s” sound to recreate the hypnotic coaxing pull of sleep. Virtually every line resonates with that soft, relaxing, coaxing hiss.
Thus, the poem conjures that easy non-space of peace and calm, a sonic pattern that enacts the gentle descent of sleep. Consider Lines 9 and 10, about the finality of death and its sonic mix: “They say that death is sleep, and heaven’s rest / Ends life’s short day.” A recitation that allows that line to cast its sonic spell creates the very dream space that so cruelly eludes the speaker.
Personification
Dreams are abstract things. They are ephemeral, little movies conjured by a brain that never really sleeps. Sometimes they are remembered, and the poet confesses that her dreams often make her “pulses leap” (Line 7). However, dreams themselves are insubstantial, vague, and impossible to control or direct.
When poets deal with abstract concepts, such as love, power, or terror, relying on abstract cliches or broad generalities cannot convey their emotional import. Jackson thus uses personification, a literary device in which an abstract or nonliving entity is embodied and given sapient characteristics, creating a more immediate experience.
The abstract nature of dreams is personified in the opening octave in two ways. First, the poet describes dreaming as the work of a magician with “wands of joy and pain” (Line 1) whose unpredictable conjuring creates the traumatic drama that defines her nightmares.
Her dreams themselves are personified two lines later as monstrous and dangerous things kept in stout chains in dark houses that no one ever wants to visit. Personification thus makes the figments of the mind real, aggressive, and invasive. The striking image of dreams as monstrous creatures breaking free of their chains allows readers to experience them as the terrifying images they are to the speaker.
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