Question

One need not be a chamber to be haunted. One need not be a house. The brain has corridors surpassing material place.

Answer 1

Answer:

One need not be a Chamber – to be Haunted’. So begins one of Emily Dickinson’s most striking poems. This poem requires close analysis because it presents an interesting nineteenth-century example of the internalisation of ‘spirits’ and the notion of ‘haunting’.

One need not be a Chamber—to be Haunted—

One need not be a House—

The Brain has Corridors—surpassing

Material Place—

Far safer, of a Midnight Meeting

External Ghost

Than its interior Confronting—

That Cooler Host.

Far safer, through an Abbey gallop,

The Stones a’chase—

Than Unarmed, one’s a’self encounter—

In lonesome Place—

Ourself behind ourself, concealed—

Should startle most—

Assassin hid in our Apartment

Be Horror’s least.

The Body—borrows a Revolver—

He bolts the Door—

O’erlooking a superior spectre—

Or More—

As that eye-catching opening line makes clear, ‘One need not be a Chamber – to be Haunted’ is about how the

real ghosts, the ones we should really fear, are to be found within our own minds. In summary, we should fear our own

thoughts and fears rather than the supposed presence of any external being, or the ‘Assassin hid in our Apartment’. Forget about haunted houses or ghostly horses heard in old abbeys; the real terror is to be found within ourselves.