Beginning of Essay
Although cryptic in language and structure, Dickinson gives her work an instinctually vivid sense of emotion. Her examination of the feeling of pain focuses in on only a few of the subtler nuances of pain that are integral parts of the experience. She draws in on ....

Middle of Essay
.... "suffering." She chooses the lexical vagueness of "Pain" to embrace all these facets of the emotion. In introducing the "Element of Blank," it becomes the context that she thus examines pain. The exact context of "Blank" possesses a vagueness that suggests its own inadequacy of solid definition. Perhaps this sense of indefinition is the impression that this usage of "Blank" is meant to inspire. In this context, this "blankness" is suggestive of a quality of empty unknowingness that is supported by the next few lines: "It cannot recollect When it begun." This inability to remember raises a major problem with respect to the nature of "Pain;" namely whe ....