Perspective And Personal Identity In I M Nobody ! Who Are You

The importance of the individual varies based on perspective and personal identity. As we know, some people prefer to fall into a clique. However, there are specific people who would rather be known as a specific and unique entity that carries many distinctive characteristics aside from the ones the surrounding world would assign them. In her poem “I’m Nobody! Who Are You?”, she indicates a struggle between pure Nobodies and pure Somebodies. In the poem, she herself identifies as “Nobody” in both the first line and in the question “Are you – Nobody – too?” (Dickinson 2). Through this she indicates that there is another Nobody that exists with her in Line 3 of her poem, in which she states, “Then there’s a pair of us!” Given the tone of these …show more content…
They’d banish us – you know!” indicates a further threat to being herself in society. With this wording, being banished from a society that you have established yourself as a Nobody in is not something that Dickinson would want for herself or the other Nobody in the poem. Dickinson also reveals that there is a substitution for the word “banish”. This word being “advertise” implies that, if Dickinson and the other of her kind in the poem are discovered as Nobodies, then they will be broadcasted to the public eye as being different. Dickinson’s tone in this line leads us to believe that being both banished and advertised are not actions that she wants applied to her. Her clear desire is to be in the median of Somebodies and Nobodies allowing her further freedom from ascribed identity. Her panic regarding the possibility of banishment from the society she lives in is noteworthy. This panic allows readers to sense the urgency in being an individual within a categorical …show more content…
She describes being Somebody as being “dreary” and “public” in lines 5 and 6 of the poem. Dreariness in this case would be the less thrilling, and more dull experience applied to identifying as one, and only one, group or category. Reading further, Dickinson draws a larger picture of Somebodies by stating, “How public – like a Frog – “(Dickinson 6) and using the simile pertaining to the Frog as a vehicle into further notions of actions based purely on instinct. The notion of pure instinct lacking rationality implies that there is a mindlessness to being Somebody. This mindlessness is described in last two lines of the poem, in which Dickinson writes, “To tell your name – the livelong June – to an admiring Bog!” (Dickinson 7 & 8). Here she again indicates there being the option to substitute the word “your” for “one’s” which could be interpreted as distinguishing one from many. One being the individual and many being the category, the concept of Nobody and Somebody becomes a conflict. Such a conflict does not entail physical harm, but rather harm in the ability to self-identify and the possibility of others identifying you. If “your” is used however, the person could make a conscious decision to define themselves as only one group. Both words however, lead us to the same setting. The “Bog” or swamp is an area where there is no real distinction of what is land and what is