Are you up there, God? It's us, Shmoop.

Symbol Analysis

OK ... so this isn't really an instance of a symbol, a piece of imagery, or wordplay. But we've gotta at least give a nod to the poem's absent star, God. True, we never get to see who dwells in the "mansions never quiet disclosed/ And never quite concealed" (lines 5-6), and the owner of the "inadvertent fingers" (line 3) that drop the fork is never revealed. However, there's definitely the feeling that there is someone or something up there who's more powerful than any of us – and given Dickinson's various other writings about God, we can be pretty sure that's what she's referring to.

However, before we declare this poem to be a straightforward (albeit quirky) declaration of God's incomprehensibility and awesome power, we should throw a necessary wrench in the works: Dickinson's own spirituality and faith is something scholars have been debating for decades. Though her family was Christian, Dickinson herself expresses rather unconventional and idiosyncratic religious views in a number of her poems.

Even if the absent figure she makes space for here can be defined as "God," we're still not sure what the nature of her God is. And the poem makes it clear that the poet herself can't define or clearly depict God. He is unseeable, unknowable, and indescribable, which explains why God doesn't make an appearance directly in the mysterious house she builds for him. There's even something a little ominous about this absent figure; her claim that things like the lightning flash are "The Apparatus of the Dark" (line 7) implies that the divine is thoroughly incomprehensible. (It's "Dark" as in unknowable, not "Dark" as in evil, Sauron, Voldemort, etc.)

The other rather surprising thing about this vague depiction of divine power is that the "fingers" that drop the fork are "inadvertent" (line 3). How does this affect our understanding of God in the poem? Conventionally God is described as omnipotent, which is to say totally in control. It's a bit odd, then, that the mysterious inhabitant of this mysterious mansion drops the fork by accident. We're not used to thinking of God doing things by accident. The owner of these "inadvertent fingers" is thus also subject to error or clumsiness, which throws into question the total control we usually attribute to God.