Analysis Of Because I Could Not Stop For Death

In the poem "Because I could not stop for death", Emily Dickinson writes about death as if she had already been dead for centuries. She humanizes death and uses him to chauffeur her in a horse-drawn carriage, straight to her grave. The sights she describes on the way to her grave are aspects of her life and what she is leaving behind. Dickinson uses personification, a peaceful tone, a theme of both mortality and immortality, and symbolism throughout her poem in order to attract the attention of the reader and to convey a message that death is not something to fear and that she believes in the afterlife. Dickinson humanizes death by calling it a “he” in the first two lines of her poem. She writes, “Because I could not stop for Death - He kindly stopped for me- ” (1). She personified death

Dickinson cleverly uses the setting sun, the dew on the grass, the house and the horses’ heads to paint a picture of her final destination. The setting sun often depicts the end of something and in this case, it is referring to the end of the narrator 's life. The setting sun also signifies the shift from a normal ride passed the school and the fields into an uncanny adventure to her final resting place. Dickinson writes “The dews drew quivering and chill” (14) which illustrates that the sun has now set and the temperature has dropped allowing the dew to form on the grass. This is synonymous with several pieces of literature describing death. The choice of attire that Dickinson had the narrator wear symbolizes the coldness, as well as the fact that she was clearly unprepared for her own death. The house the carriage paused at was described as a “swelling of the ground” which represents a grave that has been dug. The narrator realized the horses’ heads were unordinary and were leading the carriage ride straight to her death and then into