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.
Emily Dickinson is famous for writing about death time and time again. Her poem, 479 or “Because I could not stop for Death”, is no exception. The speaker within this poem is communicating with us from beyond the grave. They begin to describe their journey with death, who is personified or given human characteristics, in the first stanza by saying “Because I could not stop for Death-/He kindly stopped for me.” Dickinson starts this poem with the word “because”. This immediately assumes that the speaker is giving an explanation to an argument on death and why she could not stop.
Firstly, the story emphasizes on the atmosphere of suspense and horror, with the theme of death. For example, in the story it quotes, “... two years after her father 's death ... people hardly saw her at all. She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days ... Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly.” (Browning, Pg.1, 2, 3). Secondly, the poem emphasizes on the atmosphere that the author has created, with the help of the symbolism of the title.
Furthermore, in “Because I could not stop for Death,” one of the most celebrated of any poems Emily Dickinson wrote, the deceased narrator reminisces about the day Death came calling on her. I have read this poem many times and i figured it out that this poem deals with the Emily’s desire to leave her physical life in this world and begin the eternal spiritual life of the soul. For this, Emily assumed Death as her fiancé. She has been engaged to death, and she is impatiently waiting for uniting with him, so as to begin her endless life. On the way to death, she realized that her life before marriage (or death) is temporary, and the real life will only begin after that; in the eternal journey of the soul.
Emily Dickinson was an influential and powerful writer of the 19th century, her poems focusing on life and death itself. Her two poems, “Because I Could not Stop for Death” and “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died” compare the differing perspectives on death and the afterlife. Using figurative language, tonality, and slant rhyme, the author controls the reader’s feelings and contemplations on the mysterious being of death itself. “Because I Could not Stop for Death” portrays the patience and good-nature of death itself, which the author personifies as a gently carriage driver. The character is worked away by the duties of the life at hand that when, “I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me.”.
“Because I Could Not Stop For Death” by Emily Dickinson is a poem about death being personified in an odd and imaginative way. The poet has a personal encounter with Death, who is male and drives a horse-carriage. They go on a mysterious journey through time and from life to death to an afterlife. The poem begins with its first line being the title, but Emily Dickinson’s poems were written without a title and only numbered when published, after she died in 1886. In the opening stanza the speaker states being too busy for death.
Dickinson uses metaphors to convey to her readers how anger and violence can be difficult to handle in one’s life. The first example of a metaphor in the poem is also within the first line. In the poem, life is said to be an unused, loaded gun which means that it has potential or power that is ready and waiting to be used. “My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –” (1). The gun is unused as if Dickinson is trying to hold in and handle her anger and frustration without confronting it.
The poem reflects on death and the sorrow that it causes to the poet while relating it to the setting of the sea. The second stanza presents an observation of the people around the poet. The image of the sea and its waves splashing against the cold gray stones, the singing
Andrew Hudgin 's poem, “Elegy for My Father, Who is Not Dead,” and Dylan Thomas ' poem, “Do not go gentle into that good night,” explore their feelings of their fathers ' imminent deaths. The themes of the two poems are the same in that they are both poems about anticipating the loss of a parent. The fathers in these poems appear to be at the end of their life. Similarly, both poets
A girl is supposed to sacrifice all the her needs, her emotions, her personality to take the “honourable work “ of wife. Emily Dickinson in her poem “ she rose to his requirements” has subtly brought the small and big sacrifices made by the girl in front of the society, which goes unnoticed . “She rose to his requirement, dropped The playthings of her life To take the honorable work Of woman and of wife." She further critics the way women’s dreams, ambitions are laid unmentioned as weeds and those of men’s as of pearl. Emily Dickinson in these poems basically showing society’s view of female inferiority.