Analysis Using TPCASTT in Poem I'm Nobody! Who are you?

 I'm Nobody! Who are you?

BY EMILY DICKINSON

1891

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

1. Title: The writer’s prediction about this poem is a story of a person who has insecurity about its personality, so the author described it as a nobody.

2. Paraphrase:

I’m no one! Who are you?
Are we similar?
Then there's a pair of us— don’t say anything!
You know that we would be banished.

How gloomy to be somebody!
How generic, like a frog
To say your identity the livelong day
To the praising of a bog!

3. Connotation:

·      Metaphor: “Frog” refers to a frog’s character which lives out in an open area, they would be loud and will croak to remind their presence.

·         Symbolism and Metaphor: “Bog” refers to a place which frogs might be living. Which are the place full of loud frogs’ loud.

·         Rhyme: In first stanza is AABC, and the second stanza is ABAB.

4. Attitude:

·         In line one and two, the author asking the person and hopes for the similarity between them.

·         In line three and four, the author looks happy because she knows the answer is similar, they are nobody too. However, the author acts strictly to forbid the person for telling it to somebody else.

·         In the last stanza, the author clearly tells do not like to be a public person, she really wants to keep in a private, having some privacy, and do not like the public knows her existence.

 5. Shift:

·         Are you nobody, too? (line 2)
Then there's a pair of us — don't tell! (line 3)

 

There is tone shifts in line 2 to line 3, from hopes to an optimism tone

 

·         How dreary to be somebody! (line 5)
How public, like a frog (line 6)

·         To say your identity the livelong day (line 7)
To the praising of a bog! (line 8)

There is repetition at the beginning in the first word of the sentence “How” and “To”. The author cleary doesn’t like of publicity, so she repeart it twice and gives another explanation in line 7 and 8 in order to make it very clear.

6. Title (Again): The writer prediction was wrong, this poem it’s about someone who doesn’t like to be somebody, someone who really like the privacy in their life.

7. Theme: This theme is about love. After read the analysis, the writer considers this poem is about love, the author of this poem has a conversation to a person, and it belongs to author’s couple. Morever, they do not like to share their relationship to the world.