The poem tells of a cozy home where we dwell in ignorant bliss. We spend our time in such a magnificent place without realizing how good we feel there. Only in retrospect do we recognize the joy that came with living there. In the fable of Genesis, Adam and Eve live in Eden, where they spend what is essentially a mindless life enjoying the wonders that God has given them. Both Adam and Eve ultimately end up eating from forbidden tree, which grants them the knowledge to distinguish between good and evil. They are, in Layman’s terms, set out into the “real” world. Emily’ Dickinson’s poem deals with the same matter. We dwell in our individual ”Edens” until the time comes where we are forced to leave. We look back at that Eden with much longing. Unfortunately, even if we do eventually return to it, we don’t have the same emotions towards it because we are no longer in that previous state of mind.
My situation is very similar to that of Adam and Eve’s because in leaving my home and my parents for college, I am becoming a more independent and, presumably, more conscious being. I’m being thrown into a world where I don’t have too much experience and it’s up to me to make what I can out of it. Just like God influencing Adam and Eve, my parents will still be helping me along when I’m out of the house, but it will be very different from when I was a public school student who came back to his cozy home every single day. I know that right now my home is what I’m used to every day, but when I’m sitting in some far away dormitory there is no doubt that I will be looking back on simple things like watching television with my parents or on the day that I left home to continue my life in a different setting. Leaving for college will undoubtedly be a surreal experience. And when I come back home for short amounts of time, it just won’t be the same as when I spent every day in it.
What I fear most about returning home from college is the lack of a certain warm feeling that I know is going to missing when I do return. When I think of my early childhood years when I lived in Derby there is a certain exuberance about that time in life that is lacking in my current life. I believe that college will be the same way. When I return to my comfortable little home in Bethany, it just won’t be the same as when I was still just a naive brat in high school. I returned to my home in Derby on one occasion a while after I moved to Bethany and I felt as if a ghost of an emotion was haunting my every step through those empty rooms where I first learned how to perceive the world. Maybe coming home from college will be different though. Maybe I’ll be overcome with joy and feel the same way I do now. I’m just going to have to wait and see.
