Most of the family remains seated in horror. Stabbing back at his father, he accuses him of keeping him and his sisters “in cages”.Įdward’s heart gives out, and he collapses on the floor barely breathing. She mentions that “all I want to do is find a way to keep hope alive for you,” she says, and the Dickinson clan is grateful for her.Īll but Austin, who embarks on a drunken rant about the family being a “joke” and resigned to misery. He’s followed by Emily, who exclaims her love for her family. He compares the Civil War to a family breaking up, and is thankful that his is together. Edward worries that his son is becoming more and more like his own father.Īs the family gathers, Edward mourns the country that he finds himself in, unable to recognize it as the one he once idolized. Later a drunk Austin continues lusting after Jane Humphrey, and talking back to his father. She declares her poems are her children, displaying a childish fear of abandonment that no amount of waxing over “hope” seems to free her of.

Emily snubs her nose at this suggestion though. Sue, now heavily pregnant fantasizes about raising her child with Emily. She tries to console Betty, promising that her husband Henry is alive and well, to which Betty responds, “I thought poets were supposed to avoid clichés.” The war elevates her purpose, creating a reason for her poetry.īut her attempts to cheer up those around her are less than successful. He admires Emily for her passionate writing despite her “uneventful life,” and she expresses her newfound desire to spread hope. Apparently all the death now is boring and repetitive and as a result, he asks her advice. He tells the poet that, war is “taking all the fun out of death”. She catches a ride with her friend Death, who’s not doing so hot himself. The Dickinson family is horrified by her aunt Lavinia Norcross, but Emily is too distracted by a bird to be offended.

The priest is shocked to learn that they are not burying a soldier with him saying that, “I have no more time for the funeral of some old women…I am running way behind schedule” and finishes the service at double speed. Plot Įmily on the front lines where the battlefield transitions into her bedroom but her gun becomes a pen. Amid the Civil War's mounting casualties, the Dickinsons grieve one of their own-and Emily struggles to keep the peace in her family.

Thing with feathers