Both John Doone and Emily Dickinson wrote amazing poems. “Valediction Forbidding Mourning” and “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” come together to give the reader two different ideas of death in itself. There are also extended metaphors in each poem. The amazing part of both of these poems, is that you can get so much out of it from reading it over and over again. There are so many meanings to so many words inside these poems. In both of these poems, extended metaphors are used. These metaphors also influence the meaning and tone of each poem. In John Donne’s “Valediction Forbidding Mourning”, one extended metaphor would be of a compass. The compass is a very strong, firm piece of equipment. Donne writes, “If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two ;” (lines 25-26). He was expressing how firm and strong his relationship is. This makes the meaning of his poem turn from a dark poem, to a very strong, love poem. In “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson, the main extended metaphor is The Carriage. In my mind, I depicted The Carriage as when “life flashes before your eyes” moment. The Carriage gives it a very creepy tone at first, only when Emily writes, “Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me – The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality,” (lines 1-4). …show more content…
In Emily’s poem, she uses a carriage to get around town with Death. This carriage is kind of like her own little ride throughout her life. She writes, “We passed the School, where Children strove At Recess – in the Ring –We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –We passed the Setting Sun –” (lines 9-12). These could be some very important memories from her lifetime, as she sits in The Carriage. In John’s poem, he talks about how love should be silent, and shouldn’t take so much to show. He basically said to not be like an earthquake, “Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears” (line
Emily Dickinson is well-known due to the fact that she uses an immense amount of death in her poetry; she is also known as being reclusive and death-obsessed. Although other poets don’t typically use large amounts of death in his or her own poetry, Dickinson decided to take her own path in order to get her point across; meanwhile, some found her obsession with death rather disturbing. On the other hand, death could be interpreted through various forms of symbolism. For example, death can symbolize things such as equality, religion, and journeys. Additionally, death can be used to express the loss of a loved one or even an internal loss of yourself, such as despair. Her poems about death
Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson were both poets who wrote about the concept of death. The two poets illustrated different perspectives on death. Whitman identified with the entirety and truth of death; whereas, Dickinson pinpoints the dramatization of death. Walt Whitman’s message on death portrayed in his poetry is more compelling than that of Emily Dickinson’s. Whitman discusses the favorableness of death, the verisimilitude that pertains to death, and his elaborate explanations on how we humans understand death.
First, Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death” is obvious in its theme of death in comparison to the others listed in the previous paragraph. The narrator of this poem uses a figure of speech to describe Death as a kind person taking the time to pick her up since she was too busy for him (Dickinson 566). Death is described as warm and kind throughout most of this poem, with only two stanzas depicting a sinister feeling when she actually realizes that she is dead. The speaker tells about a carriage ride with Death, a metaphor for the act of dying. This poem, in fact, is built on metaphors, alliterations, anaphora, paradox and it’s written in lyric form; it’s got a beat to it when read. The poem contains six stanzas with four lines in each making it a quatrain. “Because I could not stop for Death” also uses symbols in its text to establish the speaker’s lifetime. The speaker tells of the carriage ride past the school where children
Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson’s poetry is very different; however death seems to be a familiar topic amongst both poets. Opposites attract, and you could say the same for Whitman and Dickinson because though they have different writing styles both repeatedly write about death. Once more, although both Whitman and Dickinson have many different feelings about death, they also share many similar feelings about it as well. Although Walt Whitman's poetry is rather long and quite simple and Emily Dickinson's are often short and complex, the theme of death strongly ties their works together.
Overall this poem consisting of six stanzas written by Emily Dickinson was about how the speaker apprehends death. Emily Dickinson wrote this poem to express her thoughts on how accepting death was. However just because death from illnesses and accidents were normal there must have been a reason to why Emily
Poetry has many factors that go into it that help convey the theme and deeper meaning. Some poets like to use capitalization to emphasize what is important, some like to use figurative language, and some like to use characterization. Poetry is a boundless writing tool for self-expression which is why it is important to understand and identify how poets express the theme. One of the most famous poets is Emily Dickinson, she was extremely recluse, intelligent, and wrote some of the best poems known to man. To be able to analyze poetry and connect the bigger meaning behind the words written is to go into some of the greatest minds. When Emily Dickinson died people tried to alter her poems which took the deeper meaning away from them. One of the ways she likes to convey meaning is by using figurative language. Two poems by Dickinson is “I Felt a Funeral in my Brain” and “If You were Coming in the Fall”. “I Felt a Funeral in my Brain” is about depression and what it is like to have a mental breakdown while “If You were Coming in the Fall” is about the yearning of wanting a loved one to return. Although the theme of these two poems are not similar, the way the theme is being expressed is. In comparison of Emily Dickinson’s “I Felt a Funeral in my Brain” and “If You were Coming in the Fall,” she uses simile, imagery, and allusion to get the theme of each poem known.
Emily Dickinson is one of the most famous authors in American History, and a good amount of that can be attributed to her uniqueness in writing. In Emily Dickinson's poem 'Because I could not stop for Death,' she characterizes her overarching theme of Death differently than it is usually described through the poetic devices of irony, imagery, symbolism, and word choice.
Although she did not wish to share them with anyone, they were eventually published and enjoyed by the world. One of the poems, “Because I Could not Stop for Death”, reflects the author’s depth in writing. In this poem, Emily Dickinson uses metaphor, personification, and imagery to create an alternative image of death. Firstly, Dickinson used metaphor to give death a sense of warmth. Throughout the poem, “Because I Could not Stop for Death”, many metaphors provide a soothing consciousness upon the subject of death.
The poem “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson is about one’s journey with death. How could one’s journey with death ever be a journey into the sunset. The poet's use of imagery, paradox, and caesura throughout the poem helps reveal the poem’s message. The poet uses imagery to describe certain scenes. The poem is describing someone’s journey with death and the stops along the way.
Both the “Valediction Forbidding Mourning” by John Donne and “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson contain age-old themes. These themes focus on inevitable feelings and events of life; love and death. Although both “Valediction Forbidding Mourning” and “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” contain the two themes, they differ greatly in how they are presented and what they represent. In “Valediction Forbidding Mourning,” a husband traveling away from his wife is consoling her.
Life, death, and reincarnation are the recurring theme of the most notable poem “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” by Emily Dickinson. Throughout the poem, Dickinson traces her descent sanity into madness which has made the poem terrifying for both the speaker and the reader. At the beginning of the poem, Dickinson has expressed her feeling of grief and pain through the use of an extended metaphor, “felt a funeral in the brain” and in the rest of the poem, she lives a life, passes away, and reborn again into this world making choice between a world full of trouble, pain or a heaven that brings solitude and peace. Besides, Dickinson through the poem explains many experiences of her in words that cannot be described very easily, which is why in order to replicate the feeling of insanity, she used a wide variety of literary techniques that include symbolism, imagery, metaphor, simile, capitalization of words, use of dashes and different other structures.
Emily Dickinson portrays death in her poems in a few different ways. For example, in her poem “I Felt a Funeral in my Brain” she was portraying that her mind was dying, and was having a funeral for her mind. She says at one point "And then a Plank in Reason, broke, And I dropped down, and down-"(p 87) which I think means that as she was being lowered into the ground, that her mind was done thinking, reasoning and understanding. In her poem “Because I could not stop for Death”, she could not stop for death but death was going to stop for her. He came in the carriage to take her to her grave. She says “We slowly drove – He knew no haste, And I had put away, My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility” (p 91), and by this I think she means that
The meaning of a poem can be expressed through literary devices such as a metaphor or symbolism.
Emily Dickinson And the Theme of Death Emily Dickenson, an unconventional 19th century poet, used death as the theme for many of her poems. Dickenson's poems offer a creative and refreshingly different perspective on death and its effects on others. In Dickenson's poems, death is often personified, and is also assigned to personalities far different from the traditional "horror movie" roles. Dickenson also combines imaginative diction with vivid imagery to create astonishingly powerful poems.
‘Poetry of Departures’ by Philip Larkin is a poem that bears uncanny semblance to life today – especially that of the current-day youth. The poem, apart from being a good read, is a very apt description of how young people tend to go about their lives these days – mostly bored, slightly mechanical in outlook, wanting to do more but failing to go noticed as more than a mere cog in the machine that’s life.