Though it's widely known that Emily Dickinson didn't exactly jive with the Christian powers-that-be of her day, it's also known that she considered herself a spiritual person. In poem after poem, we find spiritual themes. Sometimes they seem like angry rebellions against the religious status quo, but there's a lot of mellower soul searching involved as well. Though "The Brain—is wider than the Sky—" has some ideas that might set off alarm bells for some religious people, there's a definite spiritual feeling about the poem as the speaker tries to reconcile all the stuff inside her brain with the infinite universe around her.
Questions About Spirituality
- How do the themes of nature relate to the themes of spirituality in the poem?
- How would you describe the speaker's relationship with God? What makes you say so?
- Compare and contrast the spirituality of the speaker of this poem with the speaker of another poem by Emily Dickinson, such as the one from "My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –" or "There's a certain Slant of light."
Chew on This
The speaker has a contentious relationship with God and values the human intellect over spirituality.
The speaker expresses the belief that the human intellect is itself divine and is the very thing that connects us with the spiritual world.