Death in Poetry: Emily Dickenson and Dylon Thomas

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Death, feared by one, embraced by the other, it is the inescapable fate of all living beings. From death granting you access to the realm of God in Catholicism, to it being nothing more than a stepping stone in the cycle to Enlightenment in Buddhism, the topic of death is the root of many cultures and religions around the world. Poetry has taken upon itself to describe all aspects, and views, of death. Emily Dickenson, author of the poem “Because I could not stop for Death,” pleads that death is a journey. She has a positive outlook on death, and describes the passage that one would take, through memories, to the afterlife. Famous Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas thinks differently. In his poem, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” he portrays that death is discriminating entity, and should be resisted. Both “Because I could not stop for Death” and “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” illustrate the positive and negative aspects of death, the main ways that they express death is through the use of imagery, the structure of the poem, and the common theme of mortality.
Both Dickinson...

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