etest'
             Dickinson is telling us that pleasure looks the sweetest through pain, therefore, to truly experience good, one must experience suffering. William Blake's poems of Innocence and Experience would be compatible with Dickinson's views of God here. Blake's poem The Tyger discusses the idea that the God who made the innocent lamb, is the same God who made the Tyger. In other words, the God who made the innocent children is the same God that made the people who exploit those children. As Dickinson begins to see and experience suffering through her life, she begins to question the omnipotent, soverign God she was raised hearing about. God is just, and as she saw His wrath, she began to write in anger and frustration. In her writing, she blamed Him instead of showing gratitude as she did when she was young. She wrote, "If an omnipotent God is the author of pain and death, then to accuse humankind of sin is a stupendous impertinence" (McIntosh 47). How can God blame us for the sin in the world, when clearly He created it? Why didn't He make us all innocent, and therefore allow us ALL to enter heaven's gates? "How is God devious", she asks. He claimed to be our 'Heavenly Father' but he created not innocent but blighted children, not so much in candor as in hypocrisy. We desire His trust and respect but must admit that 'we are dust'" (Gelpi 44). If He were truly a God of Love, and Goodness, He would not have brought this suffering to our lives.
             She may be inconsistent on her opinion of other doctrines, but of Original Sin and Total Depravity, she does not waiver. Some of her anger does stem from her Calvinist raising. She will not forgive God for blaming us for sin, when clearly He made it and chose who could enter heaven and be with Him. She is also angry that He brought misery and cruelty into the world. She was fixed in her positions of
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