The Railway Train

Author’s Note: I decided to use the poem “The Railway Train” by Emily Dickinson because it used a lot of descriptive language. I liked how the author incorporated figurative language in the poem.

The poem “The Railway Train” by Emily Dickinson is great poem to look at if you’re looking for figurative language. The author used figurative language correctly. She described how the train moved as well as where it went, also adding some figurative language to describe the scene.

Emily Dickinson used a lot of personification to describe the train. When the author is talking about how the train “lap up the miles and lick the valleys up,” She is describing how fast the train is really going. It can put an image in the reader’s mind of the train speeding through the mountains and valleys. The tone of the poem would probably be a sort of childlike wonder and enthusiasm; imagining this train in the scenes that the author describes puts a good image of it in the reader’s head.

The author also uses similes. It describes how the train was docile and omnipotent when it advanced to its final stop. It describes how the train is all-powerful and obedient or submissive. The use of words like those affect the tone in a way that makes it sound almost magical.

The overall impact of the figurative language has on the meaning of the piece and of the train is that it sets the mood. It makes you wonder more about this train like where it’s going or what it looks like. The tone is almost mysterious, almost as if the author wants you to wonder those questions. As a reader, I thought of those questions when I was reading the piece.

Overall, I think that Emily Dickinson did a great job of using figurative language to describe what she wanted to put in the reader’s heads. If you show this to another person and ask what they thought of the piece, they would probably be thinking the same questions that other readers thought of while reading this poem.