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Emily Dickinson Mood

Decent Essays

Emily Dickinson was a poet was a very solitary poet who wrote about topics such as death. She was from Amherst, Massachusetts, and lived between 1830 and 1886. She began writing poetry when she was a teenager, and dozens of her poems were published in her lifetime. Two of her most famous poems “I Heard a Fly Buzz” and “Because I Could not Stop for Death” both reflect what it feels like to experience a near death experience and dying itself. Both are lyrical poems, and have a matching theme of acceptance, given the gentle tone of voice in the delivery of the lyrics in her poems. The mood, tone, imagery, and language are all something that compare in the many poems written by Emily Dickinson, but specifically these two written in 1862 and 1863. …show more content…

Because both poems are about death, they make the reader feel this sort of given mood of sadness, however, her tone of voice is very calm. For example, when Emily Dickinson talks about …”the Stillness in the Air - Between the Heaves of Storm…” in the poem “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died,” this makes her tone sound very calm because after a storm you usually feel calm, but while the storm is going on it is very gloomy and sad. This is very controversial because the reader is talking about the topic of death which is known to be uncomfortable as something that seems okay. Also, she says, “With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz - Between the light - and me.” This reflect Dickinson’s calm tone as she speaks about going towards the light but she isn’t upset about it. However, her “going towards the light” sets the mood as very sad for the reader because that is how it is interpreted. In the poem “Because I could not stop for Death”, the speaker talks about her death very similarly. She says, “We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain - We passed the Setting Sun,” which are two very peaceful settings that she is reminiscing from her memory. Although she is talking about what lead to her death, a sad event, she is relaxed, which sets the mood and tone for her poems. The mood is sad and discomforting because Dickinson is reflecting on her life as it is ending, but she is not talking …show more content…

For example, in “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died,” she uses words such as “The stillness in the room” and “I heard a fly buzz” help to give the reader some insight on what is happening as she is dying. The description makes the audience feel as though there is actually a fly buzzing in the room, and helps to also enhance the senses of sight and sound because it makes the reader feel like they can actually hear a fly buzzing. The fly is set to represent death is it is flying around her because she is dying. Additionally, the image of a dead body appears because when somebody dies and their body decomposes, flies come around it. This symbolizes that Emily Dickinson is already dead as she is writing the poem. In the second poem, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” she paints the image of a person that is there with her by saying that “He kindly stopped for me-” She also paints an image of “The Carriage held but just Ourselves” and passing through her memories when she says “We passed the school… We passed the fields of Gazing Grain- We passed the Setting Sun.” Dickinson sets the image of her traveling through her memories as she

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