The Explicator, Vol. 69, No.
2, 81–85, 2011
Copyright
C Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0014-4940 print / 1939-926X online
DOI: 10.1080/00144940.2011.619959
GREGORY PALMERINO
Mitchell College
Emily Dickinson’s MY LIFE HAD STOOD –
A LOADED GUN –
Keywords: Emily Dickinson, God, marriage, metaphor, relationship
“My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –” is best understood as
a metaphor for the union and subsequent lifelong relationship be-
tween a man and a woman. If we see the owner as a husband figure
who is exalted by his wife and the loaded gun as a wife who is
cheated on by death’s presence, we can better understand the prob-
lematic final stanza which has given previous critics unsatisfactory
results. The husband/wife approach (Anderson; Whicher) may seem
outdated and worn, but I hope to show that it is certainly not worn
out.
My explication draws from Margaret Freeman’s cognitive ap-
proach theory that states, “[A]ny literary critical analysis that con-
strues [“My Life”] as dealing with the issues of power, identity, and
aggression, that interprets the poem in terms of religion, male/female
relations, or language, must be consistent within the scope of the
cognitive metaphor reading,” which “can generate all the insightful
metaphorical interpretations critics have produced without conflict-
ing with the poem’s inner coherence” (269). “My Life” is undoubt-
edly layered with multiple and complex meanings, but we have to
navigate the surface before we can explore the seabed.
81
82 The Explicator
The poem tells the tale of a gun and its owner and how the two
form an apparently successful relationship hunting for food, guard-
ing against intruders, and fending off enemies until their impending
and inescapable separation.
At first glance, the relationship appears mutually beneficial and
agreeable. The gun-wife is as much carried away with pleasure by
its new owner-husband as it is physically carried away by him like
a bridegroom carries his bride across a threshold. The partners are
then joined, arm in arm presumably—the same way a gentleman
links elbows with a lady or a hunter cradles his rifle—roaming and
hunting in harmonious union. Although the gun-wife presents as
a passive entity in the first stanza, waiting “In Corners” until the
owner-husband identifies her and carries her away, the next four
stanzas describe the gun-wife’s central, more active role: speaking,
emoting, guarding, and defending its owner/hunter/master-husband.
First, stanza two reveals the gun-wife’s verbal role in the relation-
ship, and her words are powerful; they reverberate with cosmologi-
cal force which echoes through the land because they ring “straight”
(true). Stanza three sees the effect of the gun-wife’s power in terms
of her emotional strength: the warm “smile” and “cordial” manners
transform her still-echoing words into “Vesuvian” activity. It is here
that head (language) and heart (emotion) have been brought together
with seismic results. Stanza four is a transitional passage; it allows
the poem to catch its breath, so to speak, and prepares the reader
for a shift in emphasis and theme. Literally, stanza four transitions
the poem from day to night, but the gun-wife and owner-husband
have also transitioned: she from companion into guardian; he from
hunter into master. As such, stanza five describes a relationship that
has achieved fruition; it has evolved into a symbiotic and absolute
(“None Stir”; “emphatic thumb”) union that will be defended unto
death.
The gun must be “identified” and used. The gun is a conduit
(means) for power rather than being powerful in its own right. The
owner profits from the subsequent changes, that is, from mere owner
to exalted master (ends), because of the gun’s potential. However,
Dickinson’s MY LIFE HAD STOOD – A LOADED GUN – 83
what may appear to be a relationship based on inequality is actually
one of mutuality. The power that the gun acquires occurs in concert
with the owner’s progressive development. The two grow to be in-
separable and indistinguishable. The internal layering of figurative
language only deepens and amplifies the owner-husband’s transfor-
mation as well as the gun-wife’s role as the indispensible means of
power. As Sharon Cameron states, “The subject is made to change as
the part subsumes the whole, . . . —synecdoche being a governing
as well as a topical issue—even while its unspecified relation to that
whole remains insisted on” (156).
Nevertheless, the problematic last stanza does take us back to a
place of separation and inequality. The difference between the master
and the gun is that the former is unlikely to be left without the latter
because the gun cannot die. Death is what gives life its power. To
never die means the true effect, the true power of one’s existence goes
unrealized. In terms of the metaphor, a wife who propels her husband
to loftier heights but in the end outlives him is cheated out of her
chance at being missed. In other words, the husband will never get
the chance to say, “I am nothing without her.” The wife, on the other
hand, knows all too well the outcome of her survival. Without such
a return to separateness, the achieved wholeness between master-
husband and gun-wife cannot be recognized or understood.
Why a singular gun should be left standing alone in more than
one corner—unless it has been previously set in different “Corners”
at different times—is clear if we read the poem as circular and
eternal. Where the poem ends, the poem begins. The gun is loaded
and waiting in its “eternally pre-existent state of readiness” (Mayer
540). The owner who “passed” is one in an endless line of passed, that
is, deceased, owners. The poem, of course, describes a relationship
with only one owner—the current owner. But the challenging and
paradoxical sixth stanza is ultimately about the cause and effect of
the kind of relationships the gun is perpetually engaged in, possibly
the same way Dickinson is engaged in and to her own poems.
A power that does not die is no power at all. The loaded gun is
destined to relive its existence over and over again with any future
84 The Explicator
owner who carries it away. The gun will kill, guard, and defend
with all its potential, unto the zenith of its power, repeatedly and
successfully. However, the gun’s true power—its true worth—will
never be completely realized because no one will ever be left without
the awesome presence of the life-transforming gun; it will never get
the chance to be missed, to be understood in full. Again, death is what
gives life its power; therefore, to not die is paradoxically an inert or
dead existence. “The basic tension, then, is that between stasis and
dynamis, between movement and the stopping of movement. Most
[Dickinson] poems, in one way or another, bear out this tension.
Stasis is the poet’s terminal threat, it is the feared dead end that
‘worries’ the Dickinsonian subject ‘like a wasp’ ” (Hagenbüchle 6).
Here we may find Dickinson’s understanding of and struggle
with God. God is the only one who can be at once an eternal agent
of change while at the same time be absent, that is, be missed. Dick-
inson’s poem and poetry is attempting to replicate that same quality,
the same tension of being and not being: the gun is powerful and yet
powerless; the poem ends but also continues indefinitely; the gun is
alive yet also dead. The poem is at once empowering and accessible
as well as elusive and ambiguous. Josef Raab’s metapoetic approach,
which addresses Dickinson’s self-described business of circumfer-
encing, states, “One could therefore call her not an ‘either/or’ poet
but rather a ‘both/and’ poet: instead of discarding meaning she ex-
pands it” (293); hence, the reason why the poem in question is able
to support multiple interpretations. “My Life had stood – a Loaded
Gun –” may be Dickinson’s most expansive poem, if not her magnum
opus, yet I do believe there is a discernible meaning—a center—to
be found there. That center is her struggle with God and her desire
to be Godlike in relationship to her poems.
Works Cited
Anderson, Charles. Emily Dickinson’s Poetry: Stairway of Surprise. New York: Holt,
Rhinehart, and Winston, 1960. Print.
Cameron, Sharon. “Dickinson’s Fascicles.” The Emily Dickinson Handbook. Eds. Gudrun
Grabher, Roland Hagenbüchle, and Cristanne Miller. Amherst: U Massachusetts P,
1998. 138–62. Print.
Dickinson’s MY LIFE HAD STOOD – A LOADED GUN – 85
Dickinson, Emily. “My Life Had Stood – a Loaded Gun –.” Literature: An Introduction
to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 7th ed. Eds. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. New York:
Longman, 1999. 769. Print.
Freeman, Margaret. “A Cognitive Approach to Dickinson’s Metaphors.” The Emily Dick-
inson Handbook. Eds. Gudrun Grabher, Roland Hagenbüchle, and Cristanne Miller.
Amherst: U Massachusetts P, 1998. 258–72. Print.
Hagenbüchle, Roland. “‘Sumptuous – Despair:’ The Function of Desire in Emily Dickin-
son’s Poetry.” Amerikastudien/American Studies 41 (1996): 603–21.Web. 15 Oct. 2008.
<http://www.hagenbuechle.ch/attic.htm>.
Mayer, Nancy. “Reloading That Gun: Reading an Old Poem As If It Matters.” Hudson
Review 57.4 (Winter 2005): 537–49. Print.
Raab, Joseph. “The Metapoetic Element in Dickinson.” The Emily Dickinson Handbook.
Eds. Gudrun Grabher, Roland Hagenbüchle, and Cristanne Miller. Amherst: U Mass P,
1998. 273–98. Print.
Whicher, George. This Was a Poet. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1960. Print.
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