Emily Dickinson’s Themes, Language, and Technique

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When a reader hears the name Emily Dickinson, they think about a female who wrote poetry that has been well known for years and years. Little do they know that Emily Dickinson founded American Literature, and started a whole revolution of poetry. The technique Dickinson used to write her poetry was never before seen and was the cornerstone of her writings. Major themes, Figurative Language, and Literary Technique used by Emily Dickinson were all of her characteristics of her towering achievement in American poetry.

Other than her just being a founding poet of American literature her major themes consist of many different perspectives and speak about everything from Life and Death, to Nature and Spiritual objects. When people read, “Because I could not stop for death”, they do not realize the actual major theme that Dickinson is trying to get across. In the line, “Because I could not stop for Death- He kindly stopped for me-“(Burto 679), she describes Death as if he were kind and respectful to stop for her and invite her into his passageway, the means Death is written in her poetry is portrayed from being accepting and welcoming to a very gruesome dark force that immortality is to be present around his appearance in many poems.

Emily Dickinson displays the theme about the comparison of life to death in “’T IS so much joy!” by stating that, “Life is but life, and death but death!”(“Emily Dickinson. 1924), she means that life is lived through everyone and every one dies, however she continues and describes all the things in life as they are except for themselves. The last stanza of the poem describes how Heaven is its own unique place and that when she achieves her life and gains the acceptance into Heaven that, “And might o’e...

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...ckinson's Use of the Dash." Welcome to English « Department of English, College of LAS, University of Illinois. "Emily Dickinson?s Volcanic Punctuation." The Emily Dickinson Journal, 1993. Web. 12 Aug. 2009. .

Dickinson, Emily. "Because I could not stop for Death." Literature for composition reading and writing arguments about essays, fiction, poetry, and drama. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2007. 583+. Print.

"Emily Dickinson: An Oerview." Web. 11 Aug. 2009. .

"Emily Dickinson. 1924. Complete Poems: Bibliographic Record." Bartleby.com: Great Books Online -- Quotes, Poems, Novels, Classics and hundreds more. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1924., June 2000. Web. 11 Aug. 2009. .

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