“Hope is the thing with feathers” by Emily Dickinson
Today I taught Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the thing with feathers” to my third grade class, and I had to share it with you, too.
It is an excellent poem to teach to young children because it conveys a beautiful idea, but also because it presents a perfect opportunity for young children to distinguish between prose meaning and total meaning—an essential distinction for any appreciator of poetry.
Before I explain any further, please enjoy the poem itself:
Hope is the thing with feathers —
That perches in the soul —
And sings the tune without the words —
And never stops — at all —
And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm —
I’ve heard it in the chillest land —
And on the strangest Sea —
Yet — never — in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of me.
This poem is a metaphor which compares a bird with the feeling of hope. I love to share brief, powerful images like this with my students—it feels like I am arming them with tools which they can use to go forth and live happy lives.
But, even more than the lovely idea behind this particular poem, “Hope is the thing with feathers” offers the perfect opportunity to illustrate to young children the difference between understanding what the words in a poem say (prose meaning) and the idea the poem conveys as a whole (total meaning). Or, more simply, it gives me the opportunity to impart the lesson that, “just because you know what all of these words mean does not mean you understand the poem as a whole,” and then show them how to go about getting that more meaningful understanding.
My first step in understanding a new poem is usually to paraphrase the poem in my own words, but that truly is just the first step. A paraphrased poem will elaborate upon metaphors a bit and use simpler language, which allows a reader to strip away a lot of what can make poetry so intimidating. Its value lies in creating a simpler, more accessible version of the poem. The paraphrased version of “Hope is the thing with feathers” would look something like this:
Stanza 1: Hope is like a bird that lives in your soul and never stops singing.
Stanza 2: Only the toughest of storms could quiet the ever-singing bird who has helped so many people through frigid storms.
Stanza 3: I’ve heard hope’s birdsong in the strangest, coldest places on earth, but it never asked anything from me in return for its song.
From the paraphrased version of “Hope is the thing with feathers,” we certainly do understand one of the most essential aspects of the poem, which is the central comparison between the bird and the feeling of hope. However, to stop there would be to leave value on the table. We have merely uncovered the prose meaning of the poem, and not the total meaning.
Now, we can ask ourselves questions about what the point of the poem is—we can search for the theme, the main idea, the purpose. What is Emily Dickinson trying to say about hope by comparing it to a bird? What about the images of rough weather—what part do those images play in the expression of the total meaning of the poem? Do lines 6-8 undercut or change the meaning of the poem?
My third graders had a lot to say about those questions today. I will share a paraphrased version of what we concluded:
Emily Dickinson is saying that hope is like a bird because, even in the hardest moments of life (the rough gales, the “chillest lands,” the “strangest seas”), it continues to sing—we still feel its influence. Even if it feels like everything is terrible, like when Grandfather in Stone Fox decides he doesn’t want to live anymore, there is still hope in the form of Little Willy and Searchlight. Even when, in The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Edward is separated from those who love him, there is still hope in the form of the new people who find and love him. The bird of hope “perches” in your soul and keeps you going through the roughest storms of your life, just because that’s what hope does—it doesn’t cost anything, and, even when it feels “abashed,” it is still always, always there.
More simply: Hope is ever-present, ever-comforting, and ever-beautiful.