As the iron horse traveled through the valley, it had a goal. A dream. A mission, a Manifest Destiny to be connected from the Midwest regions through the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. Racing its way around the curves like horses on a racetrack. The Industrial Revolution helped influence this need for new technologies by inventing the railroads and the locomotive, rather than horses. In Emily Dickinson’s “I Like to See it Lap the Miles”, she is comparing the new technology experienced with the locomotive, against the call of the wild, the horse.
To begin, Dickinson starts describing the greatness of the railroads and the trains. She states in the first stanza, that the train can “lick the valleys up” (2), meaning, that the train can slither through all of the valleys and the mountainous curves like a snake through blades of grass. It was seen as flowing virtually effortlessly. Next, the train is observed to be “supercilious” (6), or condescending, arrogant, and proud.......
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Approximate Word Count: 834
Approximate Pages: 4 (260 words per double-spaced page) |