A famous classical poet has said that the aim of literature is ‘to teach and to delight’. In the work ONE poet you have studied, examine some poems where both of these aims (instruction and something that pleases the reader) have been included, and show how that has been achieved.

I'M Nobody! Who are you?

I'M Nobody! Who are you?

Are you--Nobody--too?

Then there's a pair of us!

Dont tell! they'd advertise--you know!

How dreary--to be--Somebody!

How public--like a Frog--

To tell your name--the livelong June--

To an admiring Bog!

In the set of Emily Dickinson's poetry, there are not long but very powerful. She can use one sentence to replace one stanza, she can use one word to include one sentence. That is the charming point of her poems. Especially for the poem called “I am Nobody, Who are You?”. There are only two stanzas in this poem, but it has a huge theory that being famous is not fun. People become worldly but that is not the good attitude toward life. What is important in life is being a person works on what they enjoy that would not affected by others. In this process, that might be long and bored. However we should continue because if everyone tries to make their goals come true by fair means or foul. We will all not be truly happy.

She set herself as nobody in the first line, because she does not want other to recognize her as somebody else except nobody. That fits her real life, she stayed in her house for the rest of her life. And nobody payed attention to her works until she died and the poems was published. Therefore she had been holding this idea that being unfamous for the whole life. In the first stanza,  she repeated two times she was nobody. She was firm to be nobody because that is her belief. In this world, there are a lot of people seeking for power,money or status. They forget what is really important. Dickinson does not like this attitude to life, so on the other hand she was looking for someone who has the same attitude. She asked who are you but then she had already viewed “you” as nobody. She thought there is must be a person on her side. She has a stream of hope in her heart that someone in this world has a same theory. Then, in the last two sentences she is in her own imagination that has met a person who was also a nobody. She was afraid that others would know them. If others know them, they would be titled. That is not the life style she wants. She just wants to write good works.

In the second stanza, she stresses being somebody is dreary. She used a metaphor that public person who live under people’s attention are like frogs. Frogs can be pet that live under people’s order and attention. It is not freedom. Same with people, there are many people living in this word, doing something that is not really wanted by them. They might get power, gain money or obtain status. However they are not truly happy. They are forced to become somebody. Therefore author wanted to live in a bog that let mud cover her avoiding attention from outside, then she is able to do her job calmly.