Theme Of Death In Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson was born in 1830.During time the frame of Dickinson’s life war and sickness were running rampant across the United States, every day people were dying. Emily Dickinson also experienced many losses in her life such as loved ones and close friends, because of this Emily Dickinson in many of her writings, themes, symbols, and other things to depict death to her readers.

One of the first poems Dickinson instills the theme of death on her readers is in poem 49 ( I’ve never lost as much but twice). During this poem Dickinson experiences loss three times. In the first stanza Dickinson says, “I never lost as much but twice and that was in the sod;”(Johnson 49) this meaning that she has never lost more then 2 friends. She then goes on

This poem is taken from the view of looking back on Dickinson death century’s after it happened. As a reader you come to find out because in the second stanza Dickinson say, “we drove slowly- He knew no haste” this itself can be interpreted in many ways one of which is that death its self can be slow, like in the case of Emily Dickinson she died after being diagnosed with brights dieses. Dickinson keeps talking about death in this poem but in a different way then she has in the past, unlike many of Dickinson’s other poems about death or dying, Death in this poem takes shape as a character not just an event. In the very first line Dickinson introduces the reader to Death saying, “Because is could not stop for death- He kindly stopped for me.” (Johnson 712). During this poems Dickinson puts a lot of symbolism into this poem with things to do with death like the carriage in the poem the carriage takes death and the speaker on a journey looking back on the speakers life, the way the carriage relates to death is a coffin because a coffin will take a person on their last journey her on the physical world and bring the person their next part of their lives.

Dickinson puts clues an small hints to her readers to show them that she is talking about death on of Dickinson most popular hints is that she will end most of her poems in a dash. This is because Dickinson didn’t know what came after death, if there was such thing as after life, so instead of ending her poems with the period symbolizing a certain end, she would end them with a dash because anything could happen from that point