This World is not Conclusion Summary & Analysis
by Emily Dickinson

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In "This World is not Conclusion," Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) explores the tension between faith and doubt. The poem's speaker intuits that this world isn't the only one and that people go on to another world after they die. But their belief stands on shaky ground. Though many have tried, the speaker uneasily observes, no one can really prove the existence of an afterlife—so it's hard to really get comfortable with the idea, and doubt gnaws at them. This poem (like nearly all of Dickinson's work) wasn't published until after her death; it first appeared in the 1896 collection Poems.

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