I’M Nobody, Who Are You – Emily Dickinson

Im Nobody Who are you? This poem opens with a literally impossible declarationthat the speaker is Nobody. This nobody-ness, however, quickly comes to mean that she is away of the public sphere perhaps, here Dickinson is touching on her own failure to become a published poet, and thus the fact that to most of society, she is Nobody. The speaker does non seem bitter about thisinstead she asks the reader, playfully, Who are you? , and offers us a chance to be in cahoots with her (Are you Nobody Too? ). In the contiguous line, she assumes that the answer to this question is yes, and so unites herself with the reader (Then theres a pair of us ), and her use of exclamation points shows that she is very happy to be a part of this failed couple. Dickinson then shows how oppressive the crowd of somebodies can be, encouraging the reader to keep this a secret (Dont tell ) because otherwise theyd advertise, and the speaker and her reader would lose their ability to stand apart from the crowd.It then becomes abundantly clear that it is not only preferable to be a Nobody, it is dreary to be a Somebody. These somebodies, these public figures who are so unlike Dickinson, are next compared to frogs, rather pitifully, we can imagine, croaking away to the admiring Bog. These public figures do not even attempt to say anything of importanceall they do is tell whizzs name, that is, their own name, over and over, in an attempt to stool themselves seem important.This admiring Bog represents those people who allow the public figures to think they are important, the general masses who lift them up. These masses are not even give the respect of having a sentient being to represent them. Instead, they are something into which one sinks, which takes all individuality away, and has no opinion to speak of, and certainly not one to be respected.