Much Madness Is Divinest Sense

"Much Sense — the starkest Madness —

’Tis the Majority" - Emily Dickinson

Wow! This was incredibly confusing when I first read it and I was pretty sure Emily Dickinson was just streaming a whole bunch of words together and calling it a poem.  After reading it over a couple more times, though, I think I figured out its meaning.  Dickinson is saying that society usually relates the minority of sociey, or those who act much different from the majority of society, with that of being insane.  But what if we are all wrong?  What if the majority of society is insane and the minority are the ones who are sane?  I had never thought about this before reading this poem and I had like a brief moment where I questioned just about everything.  I was wondering why Dickinson would have written a poem like this and I found out that during her lifetime, many people criticized her and called her insane.  I believe this poem was written in order for Dickinson to defend herself.  This fact doesn't really matter much to me, though.  My eyes were opened regardless and I think Emily really put up a good argument for why we shouldn't be so quick to judge someone.  If we are wrong, then everything we thought during our lives was false.  We shouldn't make prejudements on people especially when we are assuming that we are the normal ones.