The best way to approach getting to know Emily Dickinson is getting to know her work, in conjunction with as much of her correspondence and personal history are available. To begin, I close-read several of her poem and analyzed themes and meaning, beginning with “Nobody knows this little Rose.”
First published in 1945, “Nobody knows this little rose” encapsulates several of the common themes Dickinson used in much of her work. In order to get a sense of what Dickinson really wanted to say and, more importantly, the way in which she wanted to say it, it’s important to go almost word-by-word and closely analyze the different literary pieces of the poem.
It is obvious that Dickinson had a fascination with the botanical, and this particular poem emphasizes her loves and captivation of flowers. She immerses the narrative into the world of the subject, the little rose. “Nobody” is likely referring specifically to human “nobodies,” seeing as she goes on to list the things and creatures that would miss the rose were it gone. Her use of “pilgrim” in the second line could be speaking to the eco-systematic nature of the flower, hinting at pollination as a pilgrim at the time she wrote the poem most often meant a traveler.
She goes on to discuss an alternate reality, indicating she has picked the flower and created a new controlled existence for the flower. By pointing this out with the phrase, “did I not,” she offers both herself and the audience a sense of what could have been.
At the end of the forth line, she creates a receiver in the narrative, or a “thee.” She stays focused on her narrative but points her words to a second individual or entity that the audience cannot easily deduce. Lifting the flower upwards, as she explains she does, implies she is giving the flower to a God or a heavenly being of some sort. If this is the case, she offers a new filter through which to see herself because she becomes childlike in nature with this simple act. Offering a flower to God would be arbitrary and pointless because the more common belief, especially in her background, is that God is the creator, therefore He wouldn’t need or have any use for the gift. This simply emphasizes the speaker’s naivety.
The addressee, however, changes in the second-to-last line, in which she shifts her attention and dialogue to the flower, now reminiscing on the fleeting nature of the flower’s life to the plant itself. Whoever or whatever “thee” originally was has lost her interest or dismissed her during her narrative. This could be a refocus of her heart from God to the flower, implying that she holds his bit of nature to a higher esteem than any heavenly being she has been taught to love.
By listing out the ways in which the flower will be missed, she still emphasizes that this small plant plays a large a role in the ecosystem she’s taking it from. This offers a theme of control over life, having the power to either nurture or take something, and clearly exercising it. Even so, there is clearly remorse in the narrative.
A close reading renders more questions. Was Dickinson remarking on the fragility of life, God, her work? In the original manuscripts, the poem was not written in stanzas, but in one continuous narrative. The Franklin variorum edited the poem to four-line stanzas, so what purpose did these editorial changes serve, standardization? Ideally, a better look at the historical context of the poem along with possibly accompanying letters in disclosure would help this analysis.
