Doom is the House without the Door—

Doom is the House without the Door—
'Tis entered from the Sun—
And then the Ladder's thrown away,
Because Escape—is done—

'Tis varied by the Dream
Of what they do outside—
Where Squirrels play—and Berries dye—
And Hemlocks—bow—to God—

  -F710, J475, 1863, Fascicle 33


This poem begins with Doom, the most dismal place one can start, the place of damnation, of futility, of no escape, “the house without a door.”

How did we get here? The poet tells us. “‘Tis entered from the Sun.” Does the poet mean the literal sun? It’s helpful to start with the literal, as Dickinson generally does. The sun is necessary for life. It’s not something you would usually associate with death and doom. But you can’t have life without death. Just by being born you are doomed to die. So the sun works here on a literal level. Life is a ladder that leads to death and then you throw the ladder away, because there is no escaping death.

But since we are in a poem everything is also figurative. We are in the realm of metaphor and, therefore, interpretation. In a poem previous to this one in the same fascicle, F708, you get the line, “We turned our back upon the Sun.” The Sun (also, possibly, a pun on Son, see commentary for F708) is the source of light, so it is also, by the logic of opposites, the source of darkness. If you think of this in spiritual terms, then one way to interpret this poem, in keeping with the rest of the poems in fascicle 33, is that you only have doom if you have the expectation of Hope. Once you have tasted Paradise (which for Emily generally means the presence of the beloved), then all you can do is bemoan the absence of this Paradise when the beloved has gone away. The ladder that took you up to the beloved, up to the Sun, disappears because once you have tasted Paradise there is no going back. You can’t escape.

Meanwhile, from within the doom of hell (which we note is a “house”, not a “home”) you can only vary your misery by dreaming about what happens outside. “'Tis varied by the Dream/ Of what they do outside—” And what do “they” do “outside?” For starters, they PLAY. “Squirrels play.” Is there a better metaphor for the quicksilver joy of life than squirrels playing? It’s pure delight. But what of it? It’s no longer available to the doomed. The toys are put away.

What else happens outside? “Berries dye.” In some versions of this poem you will see this rendered as “Berries die.” This is because the first compiler of the complete poems, Thomas H. Johnson, interpreted Dickinson’s handwriting to read “die”. If you look at the original you can see why. 

I’m still not sure if Johnson wasn’t correct, but at any rate “Berries dye” is better, because it gives us a double sense. First we have the sense of the berries dying the ground with their juiciness, which follows naturally from the liveliness of the squirrels. But “Berries dye” also carries a double sense, through an obvious pun on dying, as in death. This adds a complication to the poem that deepens it considerably. Death is part of life. In death there is, paradoxically, life. In the first stanza you get the idea that life (the sun) leads to death (doom). In this stanza you get a similar idea. It’s a variation on the theme. Berries dye, then they die. The last line of the poem carries another variation on this same idea. Hemlock is a tree from which poison is extracted, the poison that famously killed Socrates. But it's also medicinal; it is used for breathing problems, swollen and painful joints, cramps and anxiety. It bends low, but towards the high.

      bowing hemlock

And perhaps you can even extend the idea of this dichotomy to squirrels playing too. Why do squirrels play? They play, chase each other around trees, in order to stay quick and nimble, which helps them in their attempt to escape being snatched up by birds of prey.

The poem begins with Doom, but ends with God. Doom, you might say, leads to God. Squirrels are eaten by birds of prey so they might play. Berries die so they might dye. Hemlock kills but also heals.  The shadow falls so that the sun can shine.

I like the way the D in this poem functions. Doom into Door into LaDDer into Done into Dream into Do into Dye into GoD. It is the doorway into the poem and the doorway out. The letter D, by the way, is in the shape of a door. The form of the letter originally derives from the early Egyptian pictograph indicating the folding door of a tent.

-/)dam Wade l)eGraff


I like the gloss David Preest has on this poem:

“This poem could be spoken by anyone beginning a completely new life, a nun entering her nunnery or a prisoner his prison, a woman entering upon marriage or any of us at death. If Emily applied the poem to herself, the ‘House without the Door’ was perhaps her seclusion from ordinary society and her commitment to a life of writing poetry. The second stanza recalls an incident in Rumer Godden’s novel In this House of Brede. An enclosed nun, having difficulties with her vocation, climbs the abbey tower from which ‘she could catch a glimpse of the town, of gardens, roofs, walls, windows....a shed, wheelbarrow, a hose, tools, sometimes a perambulator.’