18 pages • 36 minutes read
Emily DickinsonFame Is a Fickle Food (1702)
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1914A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Fleetingness of Fame
The central idea of Dickinson’s poem is that fame is transient, or fleeting. The initial comparison to “food” (Line 1) highlights how it is not permanent. Generally, food must be eaten before it spoils; it does not last past a certain date. Dickinson further describes the food as “fickle” (Line 1), which points to it being temperamental, or a food that can easily go bad and become inedible. Metaphorically, this suggests how the nature of fame is one that can quickly turn.
Dickinson develops this central theme by adding another adjective that indicates the fleeting nature of fame: “shifting” (Line 2). This describes the “plate” (Line 2) that the food is placed on; a moving plate could cause food to become inedible by causing it to fall to the ground. In other words, the plate could fall off the “table” mentioned in Line 3, effectively ruining a meal. Metaphorically, this applies to how fame is plated, or presented—for instance, the minds of literary critics could shift and cause a famous person to fall out of favor with the public.
The other fleeting element that Dickinson uses in the table-setting section of “Fame is a fickle food” is the number of times a meal is served. The “guest” (Line 4) is only fed “once” (Line 3). There is no “second” (Line 5) place setting for the guest. This can be read as only one piece of work by an artist—like one poem or one book—becoming famous. Additionally, “once” (Line 3) can be read as one lifetime, or that fame can be cut short by death.
Memento Mori: Remember Death
Starting with the morbid implications of “once” in Line 3, Dickinson infuses this poem with imagery and language of death. Highlighting the ever-present role of death in our lives is a literary and artistic theme called memento mori. Both “crows” (Line 6) and “corn” (Line 9) are symbols of death in Dickinson’s work. Most significantly, Dickinson ends this poem with the word “die” (Line 10). Death comes from human error; “men” (Line 10), not “crows” (Line 6), are dying because of their hunger for fame.
Furthermore, the number of lines in this poem, 10, has numerological symbolism associated with death, or the end of a cycle. For instance, the 10 of swords in tarot is traditionally illustrated as a violent death by impalement with all of the aforementioned swords. Dickinson’s other work includes some archetypal imagery that appears in tarot art. Furthermore, her poetry inspired a tarot deck, published by Factory Hollow Press, and she is featured in the Poet Tarot Deck by Two Sylvias Press, as well as other tarot decks.
While Dickinson suffered a variety of illnesses, the practice of memento mori was common among artists and poets who were comparatively healthy. Emily Dickinson watched her young second cousin, Sophia Holland, die in 1844 of typhus, a wasting disease. Dickinson attending her bedside over the course of weeks it took for the child to pass, as well as other losses and her perpetual struggles with health, are suspected by Lyndall Gordon (one of the poet’s biographers) to be the result of undiagnosed epilepsy. Also, Dickinson lived next to a cemetery for 15 years, which likely figured into her musings on human morbidity.
Model of Protestant Citizenship
“Fame is a fickle food” can be read as a parable, or moral lesson, about the nature of fame and humility. Dickinson, well-versed in the Bible, was heavily influenced by passages such as the Parable of the Talents, as well as the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, where those who exalt in their own triumphs face moral correction. Like Biblical parables, Dickinson’s poem tells a short story—a parable about men and crows.
Dickinson’s crows are discerning and, most importantly, do not seek to become famous. The men who hunger for fame are morally lacking. Birds model moral behavior, while men are corrupt. Discernment is also a key lesson of the Biblical Parable of the Pearl and the Parable of the Fishing Net. The nature of humanity is that it offers more unique opportunities for sins (societies of birds do not offer paths to fame as societies of people do). To follow a parable where the animal demonstrates the moral path is to follow the teachings of a more pure soul.
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By Emily Dickinson
