Emily Dickinson's Because I Could Not Stop For Death

Death is inevitable; it should not be feared but instead accepted, and this is the main idea and theme explored in Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death.” In the poem, Death is personified as a gentleman who “kindly stopped [stops] for me [her]” (Dickinson 2), “slowly drove [drives] … know[ing] no haste” (Dickinson 5), and with whom she stops at a “house that seemed [seems]/ A swelling of the ground” (Dickinson 17-18) or in other words, her grave. To begin the poem, the fact that Death is represented as “if he were a human being” (Evans 15) implies that it is humane. This contributes to the idea that death is not to fear. Later on, it can be concluded that this person has control over her as she describes how she “had put away / My [her] labor, and my [her] leisure too, / for his civility” (Dickinson 6-8), which implies that “everything that had once seemed so important and distracting now recedes in importance” (Evans 17), and how he “slowly drove [drives] … know[ing] no haste” (Dickinson 5), which gives “no clear sense of the underlying purpose of the journey or its ultimate destination” (Evans 16) and thus implies that only Death knows the path and destination of the journey. Both of these examples contribute to the fact that Death completely controls a person against its will and that it is inevitable. Finally when “we [they] paused before a house that seemed / A swelling of the ground” (Dickinson

Death is a controversial and sensitive subject. When discussing death, several questions come to mind about what happens in our afterlife, such as: where do you go and what do you see? Emily Dickinson is a poet who explores her curiosity of death and the afterlife through her creative writing ability. She displays different views on death by writing two contrasting poems: one of a softer side and another of a more ridged and scary side. When looking at dissimilar observations of death it can be seen how private and special it is; it is also understood that death is inevitable so coping with it can be taken in different ways. Emily Dickinson’s poems “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” and “I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died” show both

Death is an aspect of life that everyone becomes acquainted with sooner or later. The poem, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” by Emily Dickinson, is seen as a reflection of the passing of time in one 's life while living. No one knows when it is their time to die, and we live everyday as if tomorrow it promised. Dickinson is saying that since we as humans tend to live on the expectation for tomorrow, we don 't think about the end of our life or when it will be. That time will stand still when, and only when, life draws to a close, yet it will no longer matter.

"Because I could not stop for Death" is one of the most puzzling poems Emily Dickinson wrote. “Scholars who stress these subversive qualities note that this poet appropriated conventional language, images, and themes and twisted them, disrupting their usual meaning.” (Dunlap, 2) In this poem, she describes death in hindsight. She commentates the experience play by play, chronicling her actions and vision from the time he arrived to pick her up in his carriage to her final resting place. In the poem, the impression of death is not portrayed as scary or daunting, but rather more as tranquil and peaceful. In the poem, death took on the image of a person. Through personification, he was portrayed more like a male suitor picking up his companion for a date. Dickinson guided us to believe that the speaker in the poem is talking and describing her journey with death to us from beyond the grave. She leads us to believe that the speaker is ghost-like or a spirit who has accepted her death and content with her boundless eternity. It is not surprising that “Because I could not stop for Death” incites so much controversy in that it presents complex and multi-dimensional concepts of both life and death, both of which are too mysterious to be fully expressed. In “Because I could not stop for Death”, Dickinson does personify both death and Immortality as people, and presents the process of dying as eternal life. However in a bizarre twist, she also personifies life. She brings

The ensuing line states, “He kindly stopped for me” (Line 2). From this, the reader could possibly deduce that the narrator was glad to see death. Dickinson was known throughout her life to have been oddly fascinated with death and immortality, so it’s not out of the question to assume that this fascination was reflected in the narrator’s personality and was why death was welcomed. However, a more likely conclusion is that Dickinson was merely being ironic. Death is ominous as it is a leap into the unknown; we simply cannot fathom the eternity of afterlife. Taking us without consent from our lives (which we already have no power over), and thrusting us into an incomprehensible eternity is not exactly a kind act to commit, thus irony was used in this case. This further strengthens the idea that our lives are out of our control because with or without consent, death will choose to take a life whenever he pleases.

Regardless of race, caste, religion, or age, every human has wondered about the one fact of life that unifies us all: What is death? Both poems, “Death of a Young Son by Drowning” by Margaret Atwood and “Because I could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson share a common subject of death. Using figurative language, both poems illustrate distinct takes on a similar topic.

“Because I could not stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson has written in 1863. Emily Dickinson was born in 1830-86, she is one of the greatest poets in American literature. Dickinson wrote love poems which it indicates strong attachment because of this it 's difficult to know if does poems where subjects of her feelings or just part of her poetic imagination. The different tension that comes from her work is due to the cause of not accepting orthodox religion, “the flood subject”- immortality, and her rebellious (Emily Dickinson). We can see that this poem is one of many that were later discovered because the title and the first line of the poem are the same. Death came to take the speaker into his carriage and drive around in it. By the first passing to a school where children play. Then passing grain field and looking at the sun. The last stop is an old “house” getting eaten by the surrounding vegetation. Lastly, she comes to realize that centuries have passed, but only feeling like days, and moving to eternity (Dickinson). The meaning of “Because I Could not stop for Death” is that journey to death and its feelings. The separation of the stanza, it shows the different steps in how death feels and word choices.

Death is something all human beings will come to deal with one day. It doesn’t matter when or who it is, one could be young, middle-aged, or old. One could be born into wealth, royalty, or poverty. In a perfect world everyone would live to old age and pass away in their sleep, but this isn’t a perfect world and the reality is that death could come at any moment, whether one is ready or not. Many people fear death as it means an end to everything they’ve done in their life while others see it as the next stage of theirs. Emily Dickinson’s “I heard a Fly buzz-when I died-” shows that death is not an end but simply a passage to eternity, while “Because I could not stop for Death-” shows that eternity isn’t guaranteed but underlined by faith. In both poems Dickinson uses imagery, and figurative language to describe the cycle of death after the speaker has already passed.

Dickinson gives Death many characteristics that help to shape our image of him. The line "He kindly stopped for me" in the first stanza, immediately gives a male gender (2). This male image gives the reader the traditional idea of the gentleman caller. This line also reveals a kind quality of death. The kind quality is important throughout this poem because it allows the speaker to

Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death” is a remarkable masterpiece that exercises thought between the known and the unknown. Critics call Emily Dickinson’s poem a masterpiece with strange “haunting power.”

Her family was well known in Massachusetts since her father was a lawyer and her grandfather was one of the college’s founders. However, Emily was quite the opposite since she was reclusive and withdrew from almost all social life in Amherst. She was not known during her time, but she wrote uplifting verses that touch the heart that are now famous (Michael Mayer, 754). In the poem “Because I could not stop for Death” the speaker dies many years ago, which is reflecting back to her life and the day she died. Thus the theme is that although death is a scary thing, its a soothing process to enter the afterlife. The literary elements that contribute to the theme are personification, imagery, and extended metaphor.

Ms. Dickinson seemed very at ease with death as if it were but another point of our existence. In her later works she concentrated more on death because her own personal life was marked by a succession of deaths, loosing those that she was close to and these events in her life caused her to write about death as if it

In the poem “Because I could not stop for Death”, by Emily Dickinson the poet uses the rhetorical devices of personification, imagery, and irony to argue that death is not the end it is one step closer to eternity. Emily Dickinson uses personification in this poem, personification is a literary rhetorical device that gives non-human and non-living things human characteristics and qualities. “ Because I could not stop for Death-” , in the first line ‘Death’ is capitalized. Dickinson is giving death a proper name like a human. Due to her capitalizing the name the first reaction is that she is talking about an actual person or a person in a spiritual way.

“Because I could not stop for Death-” is the more famous of Dickinson’s works. The poem is her attempt to visualize the process of actually being dead. As a narrative, the unknown Speaker of the poem describes how the literalized manifestation known as Death “kindly stopped of me-”. Death picks the Speaker up in a carriage and they ride away together – “The Carriage held but just Ourselves — And Immortality.” In this way, Death has been compared to both a suitor and a seducer for the speaker. After all, the Speaker did not actually choose to die and was not even contemplating the end of life. Rather, Death chose the Speaker. The suiter/seducer interpretation provides a double-meaning wherein can be viewed as both the natural progression of life and also the destructive violation of it. Immortality is the third person