Emily Dickinson Research Paper

Emily Dickinson is known for the common theme of death in her writings. She uses various metaphors in her poems to demonstrate this theme of death. In her poems, “I Cannot Live With You,” “ My Life Had Stood A Loaded Gun,” and “Because I Could Not Stop For Death.” Dickinson shows the theme of death as well as some other themes that can also point to death. In this way these poems, like all of her work, are similar yet different. They are similar in the way that she writes about death but they are also different because she describes death differently in each one. Dickinson uses many metaphors but sticks to the common themes of death and love. Growing up in Massachusetts, Emily Dickinson is thought of by her father to be a happy and energetic

This poem is interesting in the way that Dickinson portrays death. It is different because she personifies the gun as a person. This is not a common theme seen in Dickinson’s writing. In most of her poetry, she usually includes two characters: one of which is the speaker, and the other is often a male figure, lover, God or both (Gelpi). Instead, in this poem, Dickinson follows the theme of ownership, and she explains that the gun must be claimed in order to live to its full potential. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker's life is a loaded gun and has the potential to be powerful, and it is waiting for the owner to come along to give it its full potential. To start the poem, Dickinson says, “My Life had stood a Loaded Gun/ In Corners till a Day/ The Owner passed identified/ And carried Me away” (Dickinson as ctd. In Cuellar). In this quote Dickinson shows how the gun is personified and how the owner claims it. In addition, the gun also serves as a metaphor for immortality since the gun does not have the power to die. Dickinson shows this idea in that it is not the gun necessarily, but “it is the poem that does not have ‘the power to die,’ a testament to Dickinson’s belief in the immortality of the word. But the poetic gun does have ‘the power to kill’ others.” (Priddy 231). At the beginning of the poem, the gun thinks that it has to have an owner to claim its full potential, but in the end, the gun realizes that it does not, and it gains a sense of independence. In one of the lines in the poem, Dickinson says, “Though I than He/ may longer live He longer must than I/ For I have but the power to kill,/ Without the power to die” (Dickinson as ctd. In Cuellar). The owner has the power to die, but the gun does not, so when the owner leaves, the gun is