In so many of her poems, we see Emily Dickinson's despondency to life as well as her fear of death. For her, both the depression in living and the dread of such an existence coming to be no more, clearly seems to be an unending form of emotional and psychic torment and anguish to her mind and soul. In the poem, "After great pain, a formal feeling comes-- (1053), we hear the author questioning the whole purpose of human existence. She states that just as our feet mechanically go round and round in our everyday world, our mindless routines also fall into such a mechanical mode that our existence is simply that- mechanical and mindless. Then as she continues with this very cynical point of view on the mundane mess of living, she boldly declares that death will come after all our feeble efforts in existence and erase our works and worth forever. To this end, each must resign, for death cannot be fought or stopped. Rather, we are simply sent into a cold stupor under its spell and forced to surrender to its will. We find this same reference to the unconquerable power of death in Dickinson's poem, ""Twas warm- at first -like us-- (1054). The cynicism of the speaker proclaims that the warmth of living will slowly give way to the unrelenting call of death, until the fingers stiffen and the eyes congeal.
In "My life had stood- a Loaded Gun-- we find the speaker being the gun itself. This weapon talks of its power to protect its master or kill its prey, but concludes that even with all that power, still it does not have the hope of death itself. To me, this describes the author's fear of existence without the hope of an escape- even though there is fear in the finality of that escape. Again, clearly the torment of living and dying is defined in this writing.
We also discover another type of torment evident in many of Ms. Dickinson's poems. That torment is the speaker's search for truth and beauty and its inability to truly be attained.