Zulueta, Ryan Bong C.

17 April 2013 DISAMBIGUATING AN AMBIGUOUS POEM Ambiguity, in its core essence, is the presence of two or more possible meanings in any passage or text. One can argue that vagueness and uncertainty put so much unnecessary weight in understanding literature. So why should a particular form of literature, specifically poetry, contain tumultuous levels of ambiguity? The answer is quite simple. Ambiguity in poetry resonates the depth and complexity of art and poetrys artistic values. For a reader to understand a poems meaning, he or she must be able to show comprehensive evaluation of the poems context and multiple representations. It might be admittedly challenging, but disambiguating an ambiguous poem only features that the reader possesses the willingness to tread a poems multi-layered representations and symbols, the ability to comprehend contexts inspired by human experiences, and the knowledge that meaning is not only mutually exclusive with the directness in which this meaning is delivered. This paper will attempt to disambiguate Emily Dickinsons poem Apparently with No Surprise. This paper will analyse the poem using the seven types of ambiguity established by Sir William Empson (1949). This analysis will feature how this poem, however ambiguous it may seem, presents a universal idea, an idea which Emily Dickinson artfully conceived and embellished behind poetic lines. The Images Shown: The Flower and the Frost The poem Apparently with No Surprise initially gives the readers the images of a flower and a frost. Right from the first stanza, the poet artistically positioned the relationship between the frost and the flower. The persona talks about the action of the frost as if it were not just a frost, but something else. The frost is more evolved in a way that it is capable of doing human actions. In this respect, the use of personification clearly shows how the frost is a direct metaphor to someone that does a beheading action. The comparative ambiguity in the poem is first shown in this image of the frost. It effectively shows how the frost is capable of doing a beheading action, an action that automatically translates to killing. This gives the reader the idea that the frost is characterized by given a death-rendering quality. Now, the question of the frosts relation to the flower can be easily answered by directly connecting the action that defines the frost to the action that is done to the flower. The flower of course is beheaded. In simpler understanding, this flower is killed by the frost. Readers can easily identify with this situation because of the universal idea of the change in seasons. When winter comes, most flowers wither and die. Like the frost, the flower is also given metaphorical qualities to someone that dies. In this respect too, the personification-defining detail of putting happy flower clearly shows how something alive can be given a happy and joyous characteristic.

In general, the images of the frost and the flower depict not just mere imagery pieces in a poem. They also stand as characters in a bigger picture in literature. It can be concluded that the ambiguity present in the first stanza of the poem Apparently with No Surprise evokes of details that work in several ways simultaneously. The first function is to clearly paint a picture of an event that commonly occurs when seasons change. The second function is to render life to this generated portrait. The beheading of the frost, to the unsurprised acceptance of any happy flower being beheaded, somehow depict that life in motion is as simple as that.

The Life Rendered to the Work and the Contradictions that Arise It was mentioned earlier that life is given to the images given in the poem. Now it is left to the readers to decipher whether these images are really alive or not. The sixth type of ambiguity talks about invented interpretations. There is clearly a contradiction presented in this life-rendering idea in the poem. If a reader were to find interpretations as to whether the whole poem is just a simple photograph of nature or the whole poem is a metaphorical representation of a fatalistic view of life, it is clearly left to the reader to decide and give his personal meaning to the text. The poem therefore, contains a very ambiguous set of value systems. The second stanza of the poem is designed to actually support the idea that the whole poem is more than a photograph in nature that it is a metaphorical representation of a fatalistic view of life. The frost in the second stanza is now given a new identity. It is now the blonde assassin. The term itself is contradictory. The frost itself is simply ice, with qualities that can be deadly. Being characterized as a blonde assassin necessitates further understanding. Blonde represents how the frost is somehow innocent with the action that it does. This innocence might also mean that it does not really intend what it does. Assassin connotes that the frost indeed, has some deadly qualities that is designed, honed, and intended to kill. Why therefore is the whole poem a metaphorical representation of a fatalistic view of life? This could be better understood by looking at the third type of ambiguity, which is the context. The term blonde assassin is a combination of two separate ideas that are expressed at the same time into one. It is easy to contextualize that this blonde assassin, which is the frost, is contracted by a higher controller to accomplish a particular task. This task is something impersonal. That is the reason why when the frost kills the flower, the sun proceeds unmoved. The frost is not reprimanded for such act of killing because it is its responsibility to kill. The flower is given the impression that it is fully accepting of this situation. It does not even hold the frost responsible for its death. Everything is an objective and premeditated design of nature.

Presence of Contradiction with the Idea of God and Fate The whole sense of the poem, with its fatalistic values, can be easily expounded with closely looking at the contradiction presented in the poem with its notions of God and fate. The last line of the first stanza speaks about the accidental power that the frost possesses. Is this particular power an inherent design for the frost? Or is this power a simple coincidence for the frosts actions? These two questions are vital to answer in the light of the seventh ambiguity because of the presentation of the idea of the approving God in the last line of the poems second stanza. If everything is designed by a supreme being, then how come the frost has this accidental power? In essence, this is quite contradictory because the idea of an approving God means everything must be done in sheer calculations. In higher concepts in philosophy, everything must be in perfect order. That is why an accidental power, as a characteristic of a frosts action, is quite contradictory. Is it possible that this accidental power is really designed to be accidental? Is it also possible that its design purely relies in its chance to be out of synch? Is the frosts role in nature as a death rendering agent an impersonal task? Overall, the whole poem, however contradictory and ambiguous it is, is really a metaphorical representation of a fatalistic view of life. The acceptance of bitter realities like death and withering, and the preconditioned designs of an approving God necessarily reflects the human experience of accepting the fates of life.