In the first stanza of the poem, Dickinson compares her life to a loaded gun, an inanimate object conventionally associated with males. Though the gun is an object whereas the narrator is a sentient being, the reverse seems to be true throughout the poem; she refers to the gun as being both her “Owner” and her “Master…,” implying …show more content…
Most importantly, her point of view in the final stanza seems to reinforce her overarching sense of female empowerment; she states that, though her lethality and independence may outlive “He”—the gun which is representative of patriarchal domination—patriarchal oppression will likely outlive her physical body. For though she personally has the power “to kill”—to engage in battle with patriarchal oppression—the overall concept of female empowerment is immortal, “without - the power to