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    A Study Guide for Emily Dickinson's "Success is counted sweetest"
    A Study Guide for Emily Dickinson's "Success is counted sweetest"
    A Study Guide for Emily Dickinson's "Success is counted sweetest"
    Ebook29 pages19 minutes

    A Study Guide for Emily Dickinson's "Success is counted sweetest"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Emily Dickinson's "Success is counted sweetest," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateSep 2, 2016
    ISBN9781535834285
    A Study Guide for Emily Dickinson's "Success is counted sweetest"

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      A Study Guide for Emily Dickinson's "Success is counted sweetest" - Gale

      10

      Success Is Counted Sweetest

      Emily Dickinson

      1878

      Introduction

      Emily Dickinson's Success Is Counted Sweetest is one of the few poems Dickinson saw published in her lifetime. Although it is estimated to have been written around 1859, it was published in 1878's A Masque of Poets. As the poem was published anonymously, a reviewer for Literary World speculated that the poet was Ralph Waldo Emerson. Given Emerson's reputation then and now, the reviewer's guess is quite a compliment to the author. Dickinson admired Emerson's work and no doubt was influenced by him. In modern day, the poem appears in numerous anthologies and is usually included in sections of anthologies of Dickinson's work. It is also in the only current edition of the complete works of Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, published by Back Bay Books in 1976.

      Success Is Counted Sweetest intertwines themes of longing, ambition, mortality, and war. In typical Dickinson style, the poem manages to cover these themes in a way that is brief and insightful. While many readers imagine that the dying soldier in the poem is a U.S. Civil War casualty, the specific war is unimportant for Dickinson's purposes. The poem is dated as being written in 1859, prior to the Civil War. Dickinson was more apt to write on universal truths than specific events, and here she draws the reader's attention to the moment of the soldier's death and how he feels hearing the distant sounds announcing the opposing force's

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