Jacob GrotheMrs. FadeAmerican Literature3-2-14Emily DickinsonEmily Dickinson is one of the greatest American authors of all time. Have you ever wondered what affected his works? Many factors affected his works, including nature, time and eternity, religion, death, hard times, and the intense civil war. On a cold winter's day on December 10, 1830, Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born. Emily lived on Maine Street in a nice brick house, which they called the “Homestead.” Emily had an older brother named Austin. She also had a younger sister, born three years after her, her name was Livina. The first school Emily attended was a school right near her home. This was the first education she received. It was the school her father wanted her to attend. This is also where Emily's writing career began (Borus: 9-14). A few themes are presented throughout Emily's poems, one of them being nature. Many poets in Dickinson's time wrote about nature, but Dickinson looked at nature differently from them and wrote about it in a different way. In many of her poems, she speaks of the mystery of nature and its qualities, while marveling at it. Emily spent much of her time studying nature and its different aspects. An example of a poem in which she talks about nature is “A Bird Came Down the Path.” In this poem, the bird is moving and in action. This bird is also unaware that a person is observing it. Emily's purpose in writing this poem is to say that as the person is not seen, nature continues to move randomly and informally (Borus: 44-73). Time and eternity was a huge theme that influenced...... middle of paper ......tead. This house has since become a museum for all to see. Very few of her works were published during Emily's lifetime. After his death, his sister found his works and published them (Benders: 140). Emily remains one of the most respected and influential writers today. All the things that happened in her life affected how she wrote and what she wrote about. Emily suffered greatly from death, but through this, death became one of her main themes in her poetry. Because of her love for nature, Emily has also made it one of her signature themes. Other topics such as civil war, time, eternity and death are presented as common themes. Most of his life was spent in isolation, but this isolation resulted in some beautiful writings, which influenced other poets and the literary world in general. Emily Dickinson will forever be known as an amazing writer.