18 pages • 36-minute read
"Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers
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Themes
Weathering Misfortune
Misfortune, and one’s ability to weather it, is a major theme in the poem, where “Hope” is largely defined by its usefulness in helping the speaker through weather events or through hostile terrains. Many of these forces, such as the “Gale” (Line 5) and the “chillest land” (Line 9) are understood to indicate emotional states. It is significant, however, that these states find expression through natural, physical imagery. Even the bird’s “tune” (Line 3) could be understood, on its surface, as a natural phenomenon. All of the forces at work in this poem, in other words, are forces of nature.
The poem’s speaker, therefore, uses “hope” to help navigate powerful emotional forces beyond their control. Since the misfortunes are characterized through natural phenomena, the poem suggests that misfortune and emotional turmoil are both natural and inevitable. Natural phenomena are forces that cannot be fought, only weathered. This is why the bird’s “tune [...] is heard” (Line 3) in “the Gale” (Line 5) but cannot stop the wind. The same can be said for hope when one is in the throes of misfortune; hope cannot change the present misfortune, but it can help one’s endurance. This is true even if hope feels small and vulnerable to the forces of misfortune, like a “little Bird” (Line 5), would be to the force of a “Gale” (Line 7).
Positive and Negative Hope
Dickinson’s “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers” foregrounds hope both as a subject of inquiry and as a major theme. Hope is historically an important theme in Western literature, going back to the myth of Pandora in Hesiod. In the myth of Pandora, hope is the only thing that remains in Pandora’s box after all the evils it contained were unleashed upon the world. Since Pandora’s box is said to contain only evil gifts, the presence of hope among them has long puzzled scholars, and some have argued that hope should be seen as one among many evils.
Dickinson’s poem has a similarly complex view of hope. On the surface the poem seems to extol hope’s positive qualities such as how it allows one to endure misfortune. However, the poem expresses a certain skepticism toward hope. The first indication of this thematic skepticism is the speaker’s inability to express exactly what hope is and what it does. While abstract concepts always pose difficulty, the speaker is particularly vague. For instance, they state that hope “sings the tune without the words” (Line 3). This “tune” (Line 3), based on the speaker’s happy tone, is upbeat. But the statement that the “tune” (Line 3) is sung “without the words” (Line 3) implies that there is another layer of meaning in this song that hope does not communicate.
This suspicion also shows up in the last stanza, where the speaker makes a point of stating that hope “never [...] asked a crumb – of me” (Lines 11-12). The speaker here expresses a desire or expectation for hope’s benefits to be transnational, for the “little Bird” (Line 7) to ask “a crumb” (Line 12) of them in exchange for their song. This exchange never happens, however, and the terms of the exchange, like with the song, are never communicated.
Faith in Conversation with Hope
Faith plays a significant thematic role in the background of “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers.” While faith may seem to be very similar to hope, it has much different connotations, particularly in the religious discourse that the poem engages through its use of Christian hymn meter and its potential references to divine beings. Where hope is usually directed toward future events and refers to one’s desired outcomes, faith is rooted in the present and can be defined as a complete trust in something. Strictly speaking, faith is not a required aspect of hope. For example, one can hope that they win the lottery, but not have any faith, or confidence, in that desired outcome.
Faith, rather than hope, is a central tenet of Christianity. While each Christian denomination has a different definition of faith, each requires a faith in the existence of God, in the reality of God’s kingdom, in God’s plan for humankind, and in Jesus’s place as the prophesied Christ. The Protestant version of faith that Dickinson deals with is a bit different, however. Protestantism emphasizes individual study of biblical texts, and some denominations, therefore, see faith as an extension of the understanding granted from those texts. This kind of rational faith is at work in Dickinson’s poem, as well. The last stanza, in particular, recounts the speaker’s experiences of hope in different locales. Here, as elsewhere, the speaker demonstrates hope’s reliability regardless of circumstance. Much like a repeated scientific experiment, the demonstration of hope’s reliability acts, in this case, as an appeal to logic or reason. Even outside of the poem’s use of hymn meter and Christian imagery, then, the poem’s speaker demonstrates a profound faith in “hope” and in “the thing with feathers.”
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