Death is an experience that all humans will eventually face, and no living human can say exactly what this encounter is like. The poems “On My First Son” by Ben Jonson, “Death be not proud” by John Donne, and “Because I could not stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson are all examples of poetry that express and explore the central theme of death and its many facets.These poems examine how people view the inevitability of the human condition, and look at the fact that people die at any point in time and is not dictated by a human’s own time frame. “On My First Son”, “Death be not proud”, and “ Because I could not stop for Death” discuss death. All three poems approach this topic in a unique way. “Death be not proud” and “Because I could not stop …show more content…
In this poem the speaker personifies death as a gentleman caller saying “Because I could not stop for Death- / He kindly stopped for me-.” Dickinson portrays death as kind and gentle as opposed to something morbid and evil, and that it should be feared. In the third stanza anaphora is used in the repetition of the words “We passed” at the beginning of the 9th, 11th, and 12th lines. This technique is used to show that the “speaker in the poem is passing through everything that she has already lived through, thus giving the reader a sense of life going by.” In this stanza the speaker is essentially seeing her life again and watching it as it goes by the carriage from childhood until the “Setting Sun”, which symbolizes the end of her life. Then in the fourth stanza the speaker says “Or rather-He passed us- / The Dews drew quivering and chill-.” This is an image of the chill of death, and how when a human’s blood stops pumping and the sun has set on one’s life, then the body becomes cold. In the fifth stanza the carriage the speaker is riding in is “paused before a House that seemed / A Swelling in the Ground-.” The house is actually a symbol for the speaker’s grave, but the use of this symbol allows the poet “to lighten the tone of the graveyard scene.” The use of the carriage pulling up to a house rather than a graveyard keeps the poem from taking a more ominous approach, and maintains the mood that was set at the beginning of the poem. The final stanza explains that “Since then -’tis Centuries-and yet / Feels shorter than the Day / I first surmised the Horses’ Heads / Were toward Eternity-.” This final stanza reveals to the reader that the speaker has been dead and living in eternity for centuries and the images that were shown in the first five stanzas were all memories from her trip from life into eternity. From this final stanza the reader can infer that in “Because I could not
The overall theme of the poem is sacrifice, more specifically, for the people that you love. Throughout the poem color and personification are used to paint a picture in the reader's head. “Fog hanging like old Coats between the trees.” (46) This description is used to create a monochromatic, gloomy, and dismal environment where the poem takes
Dylan Thomas’s famous elegy “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” is perhaps the greatest example of villanelle in modern poetry, using death as its focus. Death is a unifier in the sense that no man, big or small can resist their eventual end. However, the author recognizes the solemnness of the concept and connects it to the audience’s fear of losing a loved one. By doing so, the poem taps into the raw emotion of the will to live. This paper will describe how Thomas uses a series of brilliant poetic strategies such as diction, structure and rhythm to suggest that all men, while different in character, should passionately resist the inevitability of death.
Thousands of ballads and sonnets are in existence, but what connects many of them is a common theme. “Twa Corbies”, “Sonnet 74”, “Sylvester’s Dying Death”, and “Death, be not proud” all share the common theme of death. Throughout history, no one has escaped the inevitability of death; however as centuries pass, death is a reoccurring theme. In the four literary pieces, the theme of death being an enlightenment bringing upon revelations regarding self-reflection or relationships can be found.
The narrator’s changing understanding of the inevitability of death across the two sections of the poem illustrates the dynamic and contrasting nature of the human
It makes you see how upset he truly is about his mothers passing. This could possibly represent his mother at the end of her life, if she had a terminal illness or something of that nature. This next example of personification displays the large difference between before and after the mother’s death. “Fat spring clouds/went somersaulting, rumbling east”(lines 11-12). The spring clouds resemble his mother, while the somersaulting and rumbling resemble him.
The speaker seems completely at ease with the Death as they move along at a relaxed pace. In the third stanza, the reader sees reminders of the world that the speaker is passing through, with children playing, fields of grain, and the sun setting. However, the speakers place in the world shifts between the third stanza and the next. Dickinson states, “We passed the Setting Sun- (12)”, but at the beginning of the fourth stanza, the speaker corrects this by stating, “Or rather – / He passed us – (13) ” because she has died. In the rest of the
The poem that stood out the most while reading this assortment of Emily Dickinson poems, was her poem numbered 656/520. This poem used imagery in numerous ways throughout in order to show the audience the important themes and the overall meaning of this work of literature. The poem’s main theme was about a walk on the beach that the poet encountered in the early morning. Although the poem is about a beach it can also give the audience contextual clues into other aspects of life.
Whitman and Dickinson share the theme of death in their work, while Whitman decides to speak of death in a more realistic point of view, Dickinson speaks of the theme in a more conceptual one. In Whitman’s poems, he likes to have a more empathic view of individuals and their ways of living. For example, in Whitman’s “Song of Myself”, the poet talks about not just of himself, but all human beings, and of how mankind works into the world and the life of it. Even though the poem mostly talks about life and the happiness of it, Whitman describes also that life itself has its ending, and that is the theme of death. For Dickinson, she is the complete opposite of happiness.
In the poem “Because I could not stop for death” by Emily Dickinson, death is described as a person, and the narrator is communicating her journey with death in the afterlife. During the journey the speaker describes death as a person to accompany her during this journey. Using symbolism to show three locations that are important part of our lives. The speaker also uses imagery to show why death isn 't’ so scary.
American Romanticism American Romanticism is a concept that developed in the 17th century. Romanticism is all about emotions, the meaning of life, religion, society, the human form, death, and nature. Romanticism is very diverse and complex because each writer interprets the themes differently and each person who reads the poem can see something different and unique. Two famous and influential romantic poets were Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. Although Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman were both romantic poets they interpreted society and death in two completely different ways.
There are seven stanzas in this poem and the techniques appeared in the poem are Imagery, Simile, Metaphor, and Alliteration. The imagery is the techniques used all over the seven stanzas in this poem to describe the image of the Death the movement, and the sound which included Auditory, Visual, and Kinetic. The First stanza described the environment in the cemeteries, the heart refers to the dead bodies in the graves and a tunnel could be coffins. The dead bodies sleeping in a tunnel which give the image of the coffin and in this stanza the poet also used a Simile in the last three lines by using word “like” and “as though.”
In “Because I Could Not Stop For Death”, Emily Dickinson uses imagery and symbols to establish the cycle of life and uses examples to establish the inevitability of death. This poem describes the speaker’s journey to the afterlife with death. Dickinson uses distinct images, such as a sunset, the horses’ heads, and the carriage ride to establish the cycle of life after death. Dickinson artfully uses symbols such as a child, a field of grain, and a sunset to establish the cycle of life and its different stages. Dickinson utilizes the example of the busyness of the speaker and the death of the sun to establish the inevitability of death.
The Transformation that Changes our Lives The poet Emily Dickinson in her poem, I Felt a Funeral in my Brain that is the first line of the poem, not a special title that Dickinson chose. It tells about the story of the experience of the speaker in the poem who is transforming from place to another. Many readers would take this poem as an explanation of what happens after death, what the dead body feels in the funeral.
The second stanza in general is trying to explain that the speaker will always have a faint memory of how to get to his goals even if it is obstructed by many obstacles. This is expressed by the ghostly figure of the horse and its rider. The rider must be the reminiscence of the speaker who had first made his goals. The girl with the skirt must have been a significant part of his life, probably his beloved. The final line explains that there is no other way for the speaker to reach his goals.
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