Compare and Contrast Essay

Leena Althekair 11A – Compare and Contrast Essay

“I’m Nobody! Who are you?” and “Fame is a fickle food”

A quiet and reclusive person most of her life, Emily Dickinson is known for her simple yet insightful poetry. Two of her most famous poems, “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” and “Fame is a fickle food” are excellent examples of her literary power. However, despite that they both contribute to the main theme of the individual and society – as is most of her work – both poems retain more than what meets the eye.

As a general overlook, both poems talk about the individual and its relation to society, as mentioned above. In “I’m Nobody!”, it speaks mostly about her personal look on society and its perspective on fame, while in “Fame is a fickle food”, it speaks more about what fame is and how society both simultaneously encourages and disdains such a notion. In the first poem the speaker herself expresses her preference of remaining anonymous and a “nobody”, as contrasted with the second poem’s idea of her being an external spectator, judging fame from afar.

Moving on to the lyrical meaning of the poems, both of them include beautiful and plentiful uses of figurative language, mostly alliteration. Her intricate words woven magnificently around her ideas are present in both works. While in the first poem we see more uses of metaphors and ironic scenes, the second poem is much heavier in the symbolic and insightful metaphoric side, visually describing fame.

Last but not least, the appearance of the poems is similar at first glance, but much less so if time is taken to inspect the two works of art. Emily implemented simple word usage, such as “How public – like a Frog – ” and “Men eat of [fame] and die”; a person with minimal English knowledge could mostly easily understand these poems.

She also wrote the two poems in short lines, the notable difference being the first written in two, 4-line quatrains and the second in one, big stanza of 10 lines. Both poems utilize free-verse poetry, although “I’m Nobody” relies on dashes and unnecessary capitalization and punctuation for emphasis, whilst “Fame is a fickle food” has neither capitalizations nor punctuations at all.

In conclusion and restatement of the above, the two poems beautifully complement each other by being similarly different in more than one way. Emily truly has – although unknowingly – shown how a magnificent poet not only creates worthwhile poetry, but also relates one’s own works together, like one, big picture.