In Emily Dickinson’s poem “It Was Not Death”, Dickinson is stuck in a mental state of hopelessness and despair which she cannot define nor understand. As Dickinson does not know the cause of her anguish, she begins the poem by referring to her condition with an unidentified “it”, and throughout the poem she is trying to make sense of this “it”. The poem is written in ballad meter as it consists of four line stanzas that contain alternate lines of iambic tetrameter followed by iambic trimeter. In both the first and second stanza, Dickinson is trying to make sense of her feelings by eliminating the different possibilities of her current mental state. She uses specific details in order to make these images clear to the reader: Dickinson is standing up, so these feelings cannot be that of death; bells are ringing to signify mid-day, hence the darkness surrounding her cannot be a result of night; the cold she is experiencing is not physical because she can also feel siroccos, which is a hot, dry wind that blows from northern Africa across southern Europe, on her skin; nor can the hea...
Emily Dickinson was one of America’s great poets. Emily Dickinson wrote almost 1,800 poems and many letters. Most of her poetry was not published until after she died. Only about 10 out of thousands of poems were published. In 1865, Dickinson isolated herself from the outside world. Only her family and friends knew about her writing. She was very shy. Dickinson got to write because their maid Maggie Maher did extra work around the house that Dickinson should have been doing (Borus, 14-23). She is known for her famous epoms “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”, “Much Madness”, “If I can stop” and, “I Heard A Fly Buzz” and many others famous poems”. Emily Dickinson wrote about death, nature, pain, truth, religion, and love using unique styles to convey her themes.
Dickinson uses poetic devices to convey the idea that death should not be feared, rather, it should be looked forward to in order to rid ourselves of the trepidation that exists within us. The speaker first uses a paradox to introduce her thoughts on death when she says, “…The carriage held just ourselves (the speaker and Death)… And Immortality” (3&4). Although the speaker initially says that the carriage held just her and Death, she continues and adds Immortality, hinting at the idea of an eternal life after death. By contrasting Death and Immortality, two ideas that do not normally go hand-in-hand, the speaker believes that death itself is not a final resting place, rather it is a stepping stone to a new destination. Dickinson then proceeds to use anaphora throughout her 3rd Stanza to explain the pervasiveness of Death when she says, “We passed the school…We passed the field of gazing grain, We passed the setting sun…” (9, 11&12). By combining anaphora with a strong sense of imagery, the speaker is able to convey that death exists beyond the stages of life, as depicted
Emily Dickinson's Obsession with Death. Emily Dickinson became legendary for her preoccupation with death. All her poems contain stanzas focusing on loss or loneliness, but the most striking ones talk particularly about death, specifically her own death and her own afterlife. Her fascination with the morose gives her poems a rare quality, and gives us insight into a mind we know very little about. What we do know is that Dickinson’s father left her a small amount of money when she was young.
The poem 'Because I Could Not Stop for Death' by Emily Dickinson expresses the speaker's reflection on death. The poem focuses on the concept of life after death. This poem's setting mirrors the circumstances by which death approaches, and death appears kind and compassionate. It is through the promise of immortality that fear is removed, and death not only becomes acceptable, but welcomed as well.
Emily Dickinson's Feelings About Death Revealed in Her Poem, Because I could not stop for Death
Dickinson uses many ways to get her point across. She uses metaphors, imagery, and personification. Throughout her poem she refers to death as he, giving him a human form so people could look at it differently. She also uses metaphors, like setting sun, grazing grain, and children to represent different stages of life. The rhythm also sets the mood of the poem. Since it has a darker feeling to it, readers can get the right feeling and mood about her poem to understand it better.
First, Dickinson uses an extended metaphor in which she personifies Death to create an image of what the experience of death is like. Death is a common theme in literature, as well as the real world, and is typically portrayed as a very dark and intimidating concept. However, Dickinson introduces this concept of death in a unique manner by using an extended metaphor to compare the main character’s journey towards her death to a friendship. Death’s character is introduced in the first stanza, and the ‘friendship’ between the two characters begins to blossom. “Because [the main character] could not stop for Death”, one can tell that she is busy, and not ready for Death at the moment (1). This reveals that Dickinson interprets death to be unexpected and random - just like many new friendships; the author also portrays Death as a friendly character when she states that “he kindly stopped for [her]” (1,2). He clearly makes a proper first impression on the main character, and this is the first stage of their ‘friendship’. As Dickinson progresses in the poem, so does the friendship between Death
At first, she explained that she could not make herself to available for death, so death had to present himself to her, in a carriage nonetheless. She was so unbelievably busy with her life that she would not slow down, but despite her life being so busy and so full of tasks to complete, she not once describes even a moment’s hesitation at going with death. Perhaps she is easily seduced by the idea of death; perhaps she simply does not care about dying. Getting in the carriage with death is no bigger a deal than getting in the carriage with her father. As she sits in the carriage, she sees a school, children having fun, and beautiful facets from nature such as fields of grain. As the poem continues, her tone does not change, but the objects and places she is describing become further and further away, solidifying what Jack L. Capps explains as the showing of death being a significant theme that she does not mind leaving the aforementioned school and children playing for. Though the objects seem distant eventually and the sunset, Dickinson does not seem to care that she is
Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death” is a remarkable masterpiece that exercises thought between the known and the unknown. In Dickinson’s poem, “Because I could not stop Death,” there is much impression in the tone, in symbols and in the use of imagery that over flow with creativity. One might undoubtedly agree to an eerie, haunting, if not frightening, tone and use of symbolism in Dickinson’s poem.
In lines one and two, Dickinson uses usage of words to portray her desire to save someone from the pain and for someone to end her agony. In the first line, Dickinson explains how if in some way she was ever able to prevent someone from the torture of a heart break, she will never feel or be egocentric again. The way she explains her desire by writing the word 'vain', indicates that she has or is experiencing the pain of a heartache or of losing the potential love of her life, a relative, or a dear friend. By saying vain, she also
Imagery is a big component to most works of poetry. Authors strive to achieve a certain image for the reader to paint in their mind. Dickinson tries to paint a picture of ?death? in her own words. Thomas A. Johnson, an interpretive author of Dickinson's work, says that ?In 1863 Death came into full statue as a person. ?Because I could not stop for Death? is a superlative achievement wherein Death becomes one of the greatest characters of literature? (Johnson). Dickinson's picture to the audience is created by making ?Death? an actual character in the poem. By her constantly calling death either ?his? or ?he,? she denotes a specific person and gender. Dickinson also compares ?Death? to having the same human qualities as the other character in the poem. She has ?Death? physically arriving and taking the other character in the carriage with him. In the poem, Dickinson shows the reader her interpretation of what this person is going through as they are dying and being taken away by ?Death?. Dickinson gives images such as ?The Dews drew quivering and chill --? and ?A Swelling of the Ground --? (14, 18). In both of these lines, Dickinson has the reader conjure up subtle images of death. The ?quivering an chill? brings to the reader's mind of death being ...
Death is a prevalent theme in the poetry of both Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson. They both examine death from varied angles. There are many similarities as well as differences in the representation of this theme in their poetry. Plath views death as a sinister and intimidating end, while Dickinson depicts death with the endearment of romantic attraction. In the poetry of Plath death is depicted traditionally, while Dickinson attributes some mysticism to the end of life.
...r very uncomfortable. Then someone else who died for the truth was placed in there with her. In the second stanza the man tells the woman that they are both the same. He tells her that they are family. In the last stanza, it says they met each other every night to talk and comforted each other. When Dickinson writes, “Until the moss had reached our lips, / And covered up our names” (11-12) it meant that they have come to terms with death and have passed on.
Dickinson does not show death as an eventful thing. Rather, she invests in the image of it being a normal occurrence, even so insignificant that a fly can break up the smooth transition from life to death. This is a small glimpse into the world of Emily Dickinson and her marvelous
Observations: Upon first glance, many literary elements popped out at me. To begin, it was obvious that, in typical Dickinson fashion, there were many dashes. These dashes are used to indicate an interruption or abrupt shift in thought and to add emphasis. More importantly, they are there to remind the reader to stop and take a longer pause to reflect back on what was trying to be said at that point within the poem. These dashes, from simply looking at the poem, also interrupt the rhythmic flow and help lend a hand in helping Dickinson create a unique form of diction. Alliteration is also a key element throughout this poem as there are many ‘s’, ‘w’, and ‘f’ sounds. For example, there is line within the poem that says, “When One died for Truth, was lain…” With this, there is a continuous “w” sound rolling off of the tongue. Assonance is also noticed throughout the poem in that Dickinson uses ‘oo’ sounds with the words beauty, tomb, who, truth, and room. In terms of rhyme and meter, the poem is set with a fixed rhyme pattern that took the form of ABCB. There are also many moments throughout the poem in which words are randomly capitalized. Although they look as if they were capitalized sporadically and without thought, these words were written this way to place emphasis upon the meaning of the words and the messages behind them. The structure of this poem (and most of Dickinson’s poems for that matter) is a closed or fixed form dealing with four line stanzas, or quatrains. Figures of speech used, just by observing the poem, were metaphors, personification, and metonymy. For example, this whole poem focuses on death and truth – two things that are ‘intangible’ objects without life to them. Yet, Dickinson portrays them in a way in wh...