“THE SADDEST NOISE, THE SWEETEST NOISE”
Belonging occurs through a common human experience. Dickinson represents this in “The Saddest Noise, The Sweetest Noise” with her repetition of ‘we’ in the fourth stanza. By using this inclusive pronoun, Dickinson reinforces the notion of belonging through a shared experience of grief. This is due to the universality of death because of the human condition, which establishes a connection with the persona and the reader.
The progressing of time can intensify belonging. This is evident in Dickinson’s continual change of months and seasons as in, “March and April line.” This adjustment conveys a time of instability that hence intensifies the persona’s feelings of belonging and exasperates her feeling of loss. The personification of ‘summer’ in ‘beyond which summer hesitates’ also reflects Dickinson’s ambivalence about possession and loss.
Belonging creates an eternal connection. This is noticeable in “The Saddest Noise, The Sweetest Noise” due to the persona’s grief after a loved one dies. This is seen in, “ It makes us think of all the dead/ That sauntered with use her,/ By separation’s sorcery,” where the sibilance of the ‘s’ sounds emphasises the persona’s contemplation of loss.
Michelle Huynh, Kobika Manimaaran & Kanashya Thivagarupan
