No two poems are ever exactly the same. This can be shown in two of Emily Dickinson’s poems “Hope” is the Thing with Feathers and Because I could not stop for Death. If you take these two poems and compare them you will find some similarities, but overall there are a lot more differences that set them apart. She may stick to writing about topics she knows like life, nature, love, death, and religion but she makes sure that the detail in each one is different and unique. In “Hope” is the Thing with Feathers and Because I could not stop for Death there are difference in the speaker, theme, and imagery used throughout the poems.
The first differences in these poems are the speakers. A speaker is the person that is delivering the poem (Literary
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In Because I could not stop for Death there is a speaker. In this poem the speaker is a female that is dead. This story is written in first-person so it sets you up to know that it is coming from someone’s perspective. Evidence shows that it is a woman that is telling a story because she is wearing a gown. Also, she is going on a date with death, and death she describes as a man in line 2. The woman in this poem is trying to share a moment in her life with you, and help you to really feel like you are there with all the detail and feelings …show more content…
Dickinson doesn’t have the speaker complain about dying and be trying to avoid it instead she is calm and just riding along with death. She sort of goes on a date with him and is driving around taking their time to get wherever they need to go. When you get to the end you realize that she is already dead, and that’s why she wasn’t fighting it, because she was already there. The speaker had come to terms with what had happened and was reliving the moment when it happened. As one would expect, dealing with death, it was darker than her poem about hope. This poem was really able to capture emotion of death and portray it in an easy way to
Dickinson gives us a joyous and happy view of death, which is like a kind gentleman that takes her on a journey. He is so civil, therefore. she willingly gives him her “labor” and “leisure”. She is not afraid of death, she instead receives it calmly. Whitman’s view is the contrary.
First of all, the speaker starts her poem personifying death as a kind gentleman who comes to pick her up for her death journey. It is obvious if the reader looks at “He kindly stopped me” (2). This kind of personification makes the reader feel that death is something normal and dealing with it is just like people dealing with each other.... ... middle of paper ... ...
In literature, themes shape and characterize an author’s writing making each work unique as different points of view are expressed within a writing’s words and sentences. This is the case, for example, of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” and Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death.” Both poems focus on the same theme of death, but while Poe’s poem reflects that death is an atrocious event because of the suffering and struggle that it provokes, Dickinson’s poem reflects that death is humane and that it should not be feared as it is inevitable. The two poems have both similarities and differences, and the themes and characteristics of each poem can be explained by the author’s influences and lives. “Although Emily Dickinson is known as one of America’s best and most beloved poets, her extraordinary talent was not recognized until after her death” (Kort 1).
In Emily Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” she uses the structure of her poem and rhetoric as concrete representation of her abstract beliefs about death to comfort and encourage readers into accepting Death when He comes. The underlying theme that can be extracted from this poem is that death is just a new beginning. Dickinson deftly reassures her readers of this with innovative organization and management, life-like rhyme and rhythm, subtle but meaningful use of symbolism, and ironic metaphors.
When considering the structure of the poems, they are similar in that they are both written loosely in iambic pentameter. Also, they both have a notable structured rhyme scheme.
..., they are somewhat similar in comparison because they both have an inevitable ending, death. Both of the poems also used rhythm to give the reader a better insight and experience. The use of rhythm helps to set the tone right away. The use of symbolism and tone helped to convey an overall theme with both of the poems.
...the several differences they are still much more similar than one would confer. The main subject is death and a description of the end of her life in both of her literary works. Death is a strong and meaningful word. That often comes up in Emily Dickinson’s literary works, and is not a word not used by many poets. Emily Dickinson was a unique person and it greatly impacted her poems in a sharp and powerful way.
Because I could not stop for death” is a poem written by Emily Dickinson. In this poem death is personified as a suitor coming to take the speaker for a ride in his carriage. Death Is looked upon as someone who is kind. This poem is being told in three stages first as life then death and then the afterlife. On their carriage ride, the speaker sees the stages of life, and so it goes from being a child to adulthood, and then death. Finally, we come to the end of the poem where the speaker now has a new place to call “home,” which is her grave; however, it is not a place where she will always remain, because life is eternal.
The speaker is reflecting on her experience from life to death. In the first stanza, Dickinson (1863) writes “Because I could not stop for Death/He kindly stopped for me” (line 1). To me, this shows that the speaker was too busy to even think about the possibility of death. In life we are often bouncing from one subject to another, from one moment to the next that you are never really thinking about when death might come. Death is often in the shadows of our mind and is rarely a subject that is give any attention. Even the speaker was not thinking about the possibility of dying, it simply happened. You are reminded again that the speaker in the poem was not ready for death when Dickinson writes, “the Dews drew quivering and chill/ for only Gossamer, my Gown” (lines 14-15). Death came during the night to gather her up and she was not properly dressed for the
Dickinson 's poem uses poetic devices of personification to represent death, she represents death as if it were a living being. Dickinson 's capitalization of the word “DEATH”, causes us to see death as a name, in turn it becomes noun, a person, and a being, rather than what it truly is, which is the culminating even of human life. The most notable use of this, is seen in the very first few lines of the poem when Dickinson says “Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me”. In her poem Dickinson makes death her companion, as it is the person who is accompanying her to her grave. She states that death kindly stopped for her and she even goes as far as to give death the human ability to stop and pick her up. The occasion of death through Dickinson use of personification makes it seem like an interaction between two living beings and as a result the poem takes on a thoughtful and light hearted tone. The humanization of death makes the experience more acceptable and less strange, death takes on a known, familiar, recognizable form which in turn makes the experience more relatable. As the poem
Although Emily Dickinson was a private person throughout her life, some critics gave a negative view to her work. For example, the work of “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” is dissenting toward the nineteenth century woman. Critics imply that this work of Dickinson had a negative influence on marriage and independent women. They believe the proper place for a woman was beside her husband, but a husbandless woman, according to Dickinson, was uncertain of herself. Although the independent woman has a life, she is literally speaking through a grave. She has been deceived, driven to her death, and has been abandoned.
In?Because I could not stop for Death,? Emily Dickinson uses many poetic devices to make her poem stand out among other poems centered around death. Dickinson's use of irony, imagery, symbolism, and word choice adds to the overall effect of her view of?death? itself. It is a sham. The way she structured this poem helps her stand out as one of the greatest poets of all time.
For Dickinson, on the contrary, death is not something unreal. As the author has written "Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me..." After reading these two lines the reader "imagines the picture of Death being a human which joins the author during the ride" . Dickinson tries to portray the characteristics of death in the poem. Stating that there is eternity after death, the author alludes both the possibility of the life after death and absolute zero-ness of it. Unlike Plath, Dickinson not only talks about the notion of death, but personalizes it. The reader feels that the author in fact...
The only strong comparison between the poets, in terms of structure and technique, is that the meaning of their poems run much deeper then the specific words on a page. Even this can come as a contrast when looking at these three poems. “Home Burial,” by Frost is a fairly straightforward poem, written in dialogue, with the writer working as the narrator. The poem is about a married couple dealing wi...
...ause I Could Not Stop for Death” Dickinson portrays her feelings of death and dying through the eyes of the dying. In this poem, the reader learns what it is like to experience death. In “After great pain, a formal feeling comes,” Dickinson personifies death and the feelings accompanied with it. Although the deceased has no feelings, Dickinson compares the two to help gain a better understanding of the feelings accompanied with the loss of a loved one.