17 pages • 34 minutes read
Emily DickinsonWhose cheek is this?
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1859A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Form and Meter
“Whose cheek is this?” consists of two stanzas, each five lines long. Each stanza contains one pair of alternating rhyme, though the first line of this pair differs between both stanzas. For the first stanza, the rhyme scheme is abcdc; the third and the fifth lines rhyme “today” with “away.” However, in the second stanza, the second and the fifth lines rhyme “leaves” (Line 7) and “deceives” (Line 10). Both of these rhyming sets are categorized as masculine rhyme, meaning that they rhyme on the final stressed syllable (“ay” and “eaves”/”eives”).
Most of the lines in Dickinson’s poem are iambs. An iamb is a metrical foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The lines gradually build in the first stanza, with each subsequent line containing the same number of iambs or more until the fourth line. Lines 1 and 2 contain two iambic feet, known as iambic dimeter. Line 3 contains three units, making it iambic trimeter, and Line 4 features iambic tetrameter. Line 5 then shifts back to iambic trimeter. The gradual build with the continual addition of iambic feet emphasizes the point in the action where the speaker physically happens upon the girl/flower and feels a need to protect her; this meter can be represented as follows: “I found her—pleiad—in the woods” (Line 4).
The lines of the second stanza are also primarily composed of iambs. Lines 7 and 10 both feature iambic trimeter while Lines 8 and 9 are written using iambic dimeter. However, Line 6, the line that begins the second stanza, is an outlier; it initially seems to follow the same pattern of iambic trimeter, though there is an additional unstressed syllable tacked onto the end of the line: “Robins, in the tradition” (Line 6). This extra unstressed syllable draws attention to the topic shift. The speaker jumps from their discovery in the woods to how it compares to an old folktale. This reversion seems abrupt, part of the speaker’s defense mechanism, and the aberration in meter reflects this jolting shift.
Consonance/Assonance
Consonance is a literary device where a consonant sound repeats “several times in a sequence of words” (“Consonance.” SuperSummary, 2022). The most repeated sound in the poem is the “s” sound. The first two lines, which contain only seven words total, feature the “s” sound in five of those words: “Whose” (Line 1), “is” (Line 1), “this” (Line 1), “rosy” (Line 2), “face” (Line 2). The soft “c” sound in the last word sounds the same as the “s” sound in the other words.
In contrast to consonance, “[a]ssonance is a literary sound device that repeats a vowel sound several times in a sequence of words” (“Assonance.” SuperSummary, 2022). The short “i” sound is repeated in the first line of the second stanza: “Robins, in the tradition” (Line 6). Both the implementation of consonance and assonance assist with the flow of the poem, urging and guiding readers from one line to the next. Rather than allowing the reader to get “stuck” on one word or phrasing (except for the dashes used in Line 4 or the extra unstressed syllable added to Line 6, both for emphasis), assonance and consonance help the reader to maintain a consistent pace as they make their way through the poem.
Personification
Personification is a literary device “of figurative language that endows non-human subjects with human characteristics. This figure of speech is a form of metaphor, in that it ascribes the qualities of one thing to another” (“Personification.” SuperSummary, 2022). In Dickinson’s poem, personification assists her text’s ambiguity. Readers constantly question whether the speaker has come upon the newly lifeless body of a girl/woman or if they have found a wilting flower. Both the girl and the flower have a “cheek” (Line 1), a “rosy face” (Line 2), and a “blush” (Line 3), all which are anatomical features or actions commonly attributed to humans. The personification in this poem is a purposeful disorientation, as it blurs the line between the literal and figurative.
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By Emily Dickinson
