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Analysis Of Emily Dickinson's Attitude Towards Death

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The only certainty in life is death. It is something that shows up in every single art movement and style. This includes the work of Dickinson who lived when death would have been an ever present reality. She dealt with the death of family members as well as close friends. However Dickinson 's references to death tend to swing between the usual almost fear of it and this seeming picture of death as an almost kind figure that is not to be feared. This dichotomy shows an attitude towards death that would become more present after her passing, that while we may fear the unknown death itself is something natural and is not intentionally malicious. Considering her many references to death it is almost fitting that as Oates said the sheer number of poems Dickinson wrote were not known until after her own passing and that they "astonished everyone" since there were "1,775 poems of varying degrees of completeness" (x). Oates also notes that Dickinson wrote "frankly of despair" (xxi) which was something she must have at least seen many times. Taken together these two facts form an almost irony in that Dickinson wrote often of despair and death yet her writings …show more content…

Emily Dickinson lived during a time when many would become very well acquainted with death. As such it would become a specter that was feared as it could make an appearance at any time. So looking at Dickinson 's work it seems rather interesting that taken as a collection there seems to be the tale of one character that comes to view death in a multitude of different ways throughout their life. First is the feared figure that leaves them restless, then death comes as something numbing but leaves the living to celebrate the life of the one that has passed, life as a story that is completed and finished upon death, and finally coming to see death as kind figure that takes one to a new home. this finally view is what paints death as something that is not to be feared but rather as something natural, it is the next

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