A Narrow Fellow in the Grass

A Narrow Fellow in the Grass is a wonderful little poem written by the American poet Emily Dickinson. The poem conforms to her usual styles and distinctive nuances. One of these common themes, nature, is strewn throughout the poem. Dickinson's imagery applies itself quite well to nature in such lines as line number five, "The grass divides as with a comb..." and lines number nine and ten, "He likes a boggy acre,/ A floor too cool for corn." The first of these lines gives the reader a sense of truly being in nature as the "Narrow Fellow" slips beneath your feet, cutting itself through the grass as would a comb through one's hair. The latter allows the reader to envision his or herself in a boggy marsh. The "...floor too cool for corn...", as well, refers to a marsh. Being as corn is a fickle plant, it cannot be planted in a marsh. Thus, the "floor" is "too cool" for it.

Another common theme of Dickinson's works appears in this poem: Death. The narrow fellow (presumably a venomous snake) is characterized as killer. The last stanza of the poem sums up the fear brought about by the snake: "But never met this fellow,/ Attended or alone,/ Without a tighter breathing,/ And zero at the bone." To summarize this stanza, Dickinson is mainly trying to say, "None have met this snake without being scared." To be scared, some danger must be involved. Seeing as death is a common undertone of her works, it is a fair assumption that the creature is deadly.

Dickinson personifies the snake by, quite obviously and simply, calling him a "fellow". A fellow is defined as:

1. A man or boy: a fine old fellow; a nice little fellow.

2. Informal. beau; suitor: Mary had her fellow over to meet her folks.

3. Informal. person; one: They don't treat a fellow very well here

etc... The basic gist of the word is "person" which the creature clearly is not. This, therefore, is personification, a literary device often used by Emily Dickinson.