Twas like a Maelstrom, with a Notch by Emily Dickinson - Kelompok 9

Aisa Damayanti K. (20131111029)

Tri Kartini Kartika B. (20131111080)

Twas  like  a Maelstrom, with a notch

by Emily Dickinson

Twas like a maelstrom, with a notch

That nearer, every day,

Kept narrowing its boiling wheel

Until the agony

Toyed coolly with the final inch

Of your delirious hem-

And you dropt, lost

When something broke-

And let you from a dream-

As if a Goblin with a gauge-

Kept measuring the hours-

Until you felt your second

Weigh, helpless, in his paws-

And not a sinew - stirred - could help,

And sense was setting numb-

When God - remembered - and the fiend

Let go, then, overcome-

As if your sentence stood - pronounced-

And you were frozen led

From Dungeon’s luxury of doubt

To Gibbets, and the dead-

And when the film had stitched your eyes

A creature gasped “Reprieve”!

Which Anguish was the utterest - then -

To perish, or live?

In this poem, We can imagine that “a Maelstrom” is a nightmare that nearer come every day. The bad dreams that make human feel the deep pain.  When people got a nightmare that bring us to the scariest things and it feel like we cannot speak any words. The first two stanzas describe as if you are being trapped in a huge whirlpool. And then you drowned, delirious with the pain until you had been pulled under all the way to the last inch of clothes. Just if we wake up from the nightmare because there is something that break the dream, it is a very near miss.

The next two stanzas describe another nightmare. There is a big goblin that have “paws” in its hand. The goblin measures your suffering with a gauge, a minute until an hour its make you numb so that you cannot move a muscle to set yourself free. We often have this nightmare. The bad dream that make people fighting to move or even to shout out for help but unable to. The devil let us go when God comes. Thing that the human remembered at the last second is the Goblin becomes the devil “the Fiend,” as if you were captured by Satan and carried, helpless, into Hell. The terrible experience is as if you’d been sentenced to death but then left in the dungeon about your future.

Certainly, there is no optimism in this poetry. Its like someone who giving up for life when they are trapped in a trouble. What all of these events have is the feeling of helplessness. You know for sure your moment of death is at hand. As if “frozen,” you go, and as you are hanged and your film of eyes was over. someone comes running up gasping “’Reprieve’!” you can still saved at the last second from a hideous death. In the end of the poetry there are two words “perish” and “live”. We do not know is the person still alive or pass away right there after they got that bad experience. The sufferer doesn’t have power to avoid pain or to inspire her rescue. Rescue seems as inexplicable as pain. After all that nightmare, it seems like that person was  give in when they are trapped in the bad things. That person  become too pessimism and no willing to run from the fear, just being helplessly.