"These are the days when Birds come back" by Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson, in her poem, “These are the days when Birds come back”, comments on the uncertainty of religion and implies that religion can be neither proven nor disproven.  In the footnotes in Perrine’s, it says the time of year represented in the poem is an Indian summer. An Indian summer is a sudden heat wave that occurs in the fall. Even the time of year depicted in the poem is representative of uncertainty as even when it is supposed to be cold, there can be a sudden, unexpected shift in temperature. I think the heat wave represents any unexpected or difficult time in life.  In the first stanza, “ a Bird or two” is fooled by the Indian summer and think that summer has returned.  Birds symbolize a higher connection to God which is represented by the fact they in flight they are physically closer to God. The fact that the word Bird is capitalized indicates that these birds are connected to God in some way and may be angels. The Birds looking back could be a metaphor for religious people who in an unexpected time of trouble, don’t look to God, but “take a backward look” or look for solutions from other sources.  The reason why religious people look back is because God can be neither proven nor disproven and thus they can’t be sure if God is the solution to their problems.

In the next stanza, “The skies resume the old”, as in they return to normal when the trouble has passed. However this transition is described as “sophistries of June” because the troubles appear to have passed for misleading reasons. The religious people think that the reason that their troubles have passed is because of God, but this can’t be proven. This image is depicted in the last line of the stanza: the portrayal of “a blue and gold mistake” is representative of a summer day where the sky is clear and the sun is shining.

Even though the Indian summer fooled the birds, it is a “fraud that cannot cheat the Bee”.  In the footnotes of Perrine’s, it says that the bee is “an allusion to one of the apocryphal tales of Solomon, who distinguished between real and artificial flowers by pitting a bee in the room; the bee of course flew to the real”. According to this description, the bee represents the ability to distinguish between the real and the artificial. Dickinson says that she was “almost” fooled which “induces” or influences her beliefs.  So unlike the other followers, she wasn’t fooled to blindly believe in God, but appears to take a more neutral stance on religion. He may or may not exist.

Dickinson describes death as the moment when one discovers whether or not God exists. The “altered air” represents a kind of enlightenment.  “Oh Last Communion in the Haze” is when you become enlightened to the existence or nonexistence to God as it is when the “haze” is lifted. When we die we “partake” in “bread” and “wine”. This represents the body of Christ, and in eating, we are becoming closer to God in the afterlife after we die. However, bread and wine are also associated with the death of Christ; so possibly upon us dying and not going to the afterlife, we will realize that God doesn’t existence and our idea of God dies. Either way we won’t be sure of the existence of God until we die, but at that point it is too late. 

The Alternate Ending of A Doll's House.

The alternating ending of the play changes everything. As I wrote in my previous blog, the original ending is powerful because Nora’s fate is unclear. Will she break free of society? Can anyone break free of society? A woman leaving her husband in the 1800’s was unheard of and was societal suicide. Ibsen pushes against the boundaries of society and critics the confines that favor conformity over individuality. Of course this is the sort of stuff we love in AP Lit. We could have a seminar on this for all 6 periods if allowed and I think this is what Ibsen was aiming for when he wrote the play. He wanted to challenge the social norms of society. However the problem with that is that society at the time didn't want to be challenged. It is ironic that the very thing that Ibsen challenges, the suffocation of individuality by social conformity, ends up causing him to write a new ending. Driven by a need to make money and “survive”, Ibsen conforms to society and writes the ending that society wants. Sounds familiar? Kristine conforms to society and gets married so that she can “survive”. Nora plays along with Torvald so that she can “survive”.  In all of these cases, social conformity = survival. For Ibsen “the wonderful” would be when society is ready to read the original ending of A Doll’s House. Maybe this is another reason why Ibsen hated the alternating ending; he realized that in writing it he exemplifies that not even he can break free.

I actually like that there are two endings. It shows the impact that the final lines of a work have on the meaning of a play and it is an interesting point of comparison. However seeing the alternate ending only, as many people did when the play was released, completely changes everything. Many of the questions that the original play evokes become answered. Nora can’t break free of society, that’s why she stayed with Torvald. Also, as a woman, she wouldn't dare give up her “sacred duties” to her husband and her children because in society’s eyes, her only reason for being alive was to fulfill those duties. If Ibsen took away all the allusions to sex and alcohol, it could be a Disney movie where the loving wife tries to save her husband whose hubris won’t allow him to receive help and this gets the wife into trouble. Her husband comes to her rescue and accepts her wrong doing. Actually this sounds exactly like Nora’s fantasy. The difference is while in the original ending the doll house falls apart and Nora decides to leave it in favor of living a life based in reality, in the alternate ending Nora returns to the doll house and nothing changes.  In the alternate ending, the play loses its original purpose because the boundaries of society aren't challenged, they are accepted. Each ending represents various paths in life we must between in many decisions that we make. Do you take the path of individuality or conformity? Do you take the difficult route of uncertainty or do you take the path of least resistance and familiarity? Whether or not you know it, the conflict of the doll’s house is present in your daily decisions. 

The Original Ending of A Doll's House

The final scene of A Doll’s House dictates how you read the play. The whole plays builds up to the ending in a way.  The final scene represents a moment of enlightenment for Nora who realizes that in trying to meet the social expectations of her, she has given up her own individuality. Torvald even tells her, “you are a wife and mother before you are anything else”, which exemplifies that society expects her to put her husband and children before herself. At this point Nora probably feels like a slave to a family and society that takes her for granted; she dedicates her whole life to serving her father and her husband. Of course Torvald, a man who has strictly obeyed his gender role in society, is baffled by Nora. A woman leaving her husband was something that was unheard of in 1800 society. It is ironic that while the man is expected to be the enlightened one who guides the ignorant wife who blindly follows him, Nora is the one who is enlightened about the true nature of their relationship and thus guides Torvald who has been blindly following society. Nora leaving Torvald represents her breaking the societal chains that have kept her from developing as an individual. Yet this raises the question, can you really break free from society? I mean unless you on a mountain by yourself, everyone is shaped by the society they live in. Sure Nora has left her societal obligations to Torvald and her children, but she will still be confined by how the outside world judges her. She will be looked down upon as a woman who left her husband and she will have difficulty finding work.  So is she truly free of society? Will Nora, who has lived her whole life sheltered by the warmth of the doll’s house, be able to survive in the harsh, outside world? I think implies that she won’t. Kristine, a foul for Nora, is pushed back into marriage. Nora says for her to return, “the most wonderful of all would have to happen”.  The wonderful represents when Torvald can treat her as his equal which would allow them to have a “true marriage”, one not based on lies or pretending. However I don’t think the most wonderful thing will happen. Torvald’s last line in the play, “The most wonderful -?!” ends with a question mark, meaning that he still questions what the wonderful is.  If Torvald doesn’t even know what the most wonderful thing is, how can he ever achieve it? Though Ibsen seems to imply that Nora will be unsuccessful in breaking free of her societal expectations and possibly changing society, history tells a different story. Women’s rights was achieved by independent who forcefully went against the grain such as by entering the work force and showed the world that women can operate in society without being babied by their husbands. Some women like Kristine did so out of necessity while others like Nora did so for personal development. The unresolved fate of Nora is what makes this play so thought provoking, possibly implying that the struggle between the individual and society is forever on going.