Water as Mythic Symbol: A Comparative Study of Traditional Imagery and Emily Dickinson’s Sea Poetry

This research compares traditional mythic conceptions of water with Emily Dickinson’s symbolic use of the sea in her poetry. Across many world myths, water embodies the cyclical process of birth, death, and rebirth: it springs from a hidden source, flows as a stream into a river, and ultimately merges with the sea. Within these traditions, the sea voyage frequently functions as a symbolic passage from life to death. Just as heroes in myth cross rivers or oceans to enter the realm of the dead, so too do Dickinson’s poetic journeys toward the sea reflect encounters with mortality. Numerous poems by Dickinson echo this mythic symbolism, rendering the sea not only as a literal image of vastness but also as a threshold between temporal existence and the eternal. Her representations of journeys toward the sea often signify an encounter with death, paralleling the mythic hero’s crossing of the threshold. As with the hero’s threshold anxiety, Dickinson’s personae frequently face a liminal moment of terror before death, marked by hesitation, withdrawal, or retreat. This recurrent pattern dramatizes an archetypal fear of transgressing the boundary between life and death, suggesting that the moment of passage is fraught with uncertainty and trembling awe. Yet Dickinson also complicates this pattern in significant ways. In some poems, earthly existence appears as an island set within the boundless ocean, a figure of eternity that surrounds yet also promises union. Here, the poetic voice resolves to confront the oceanic expanse with courage, transforming fear into bold acceptance. This confrontation develops into the motif of the sea voyage, which transcends the terror of drowning and envisions the possibility of re-emergence after submersion—an archetypal enactment of death and rebirth. Through this recurrent imagery of the sea voyage, Dickinson not only dramatizes mortality but also imagines renewal beyond death, portraying her poetic personae as enacting a mythic journey that moves through fear, confrontation, and ultimate transformation.