It Was Not Death, For I Stood Up by Emily Dickinson
In the poem by Emily Dickinson "It Was Not Death, for I Stood Up," the main character has just lost a loved one and feels such devastation that cannot be put into words, but could only be described as "not" something. She feels such loss at her loved one's burial, that his "burial reminded [her] of [hers]". He has been a huge part of her life, so when he dies, that part of her dies also, and is buried with him. She cannot put the feeling of devastation into words, for if pain can be described, it has a mortal limit and is bearable. The pain of the character in this poem is beyond that. In philosophy, one cannot describe chaos or God using affirmative words; one has to say "chaos is not, God is not." Likewise in the poem, Emily Dickinson uses negations rather than affirmative statements to describe her anguish as an intangible entity. She does not even use a word such as "agony", or "grief" anywhere in the poem in order to emphasize that her feeling cannot be condensed into a simple word. Instead, she describes the chaos she feels by using negations of opposing forces, "it was not fire it was not heat", and then saying that she feels them all at once.
Emily Dickinson uses imagery to make the shock she feels more vivid to the reader. Her life "was fitted on a frame and [she] could not breathe without a key." This metaphor reminds the reader of the stifling feeling in the throat and gasping for air, when one sobs violently but tears don't come. She does not have the "key". She cannot help herself because she has lost everything, the "key" must come from somewhere else. "And 'twas like midnight some when everything that ticked has stopped and space stares all around." This is like the first feeling of shock, when the conception of time and space is completely different. The feeling of shock is like hanging in the middle of space, outside of measured time.
What the character feels can be best described as "utter nothing", or "Chaos without chance or spar." It always makes one feel better when he can change something or turn the feeling of nothing into something else.
He also made us experience the awe and misery of the mother by describing her “trembling steps” when she went to read. the letter, her “sickly white face and dull in the head”. In addition to her state after her son’s death, she was “presently drest in. black”, “her meals untouched”, “fitfully sleeping often waking” and “sleeping”. her “deep longing.to be with her dead son”. Dickinson uses imaginative and figurative language.
Emily Dickinson is well-known as a poet who lived a secluded and sheltered life. Many of her poems focus on subjects of death and dying. In “Because I could not stop for death”, Emily Dickinson expresses her very personal thoughts on death and what follows. She presents these thoughts in the form of a poem in which she shares her feelings and philosophies as someone who experienced life as a sheltered recluse. This paper will review Emily Dickinson’s poem, and will evaluate her use of familiar sensory stimuli to describe the three stages of life as well as her use of personifications, metaphoric devices, and tone to illuminate death in a pleasant light and contradict its connotation as the end.
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.
Emily Dickinson is one of the most popular American poets of all time. Her poetry is seen as intense and passionate. Several of her many poems seem to be devoted to death and sadness. No one seems to know the exact connections between actual events in her life and the poetry that she wrote. The reader can see vivid images of Dickinson's ideas of death in several of her poems. Dickinson's use of imagery and symbolism are apparent in several of her death poems, especially in these three: "I Felt a Funeral in My Brain," "I Heard a Fly Buzz-When I Died," and "Because I Could Not Stop for Death."
Emily Dickinson once said, “Dying is a wild night and a new road.” Some people welcome death with open arms while others cower in fear when confronted in the arms of death. Through the use of ambiguity, metaphors, personification and paradoxes Emily Dickinson still gives readers a sense of vagueness on how she feels about dying. Emily Dickinson inventively expresses the nature of death in the poems, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (280)”, “I Heard a fly Buzz—When I Died—(465)“ and “Because I could not stop for Death—(712)”.
In Emily Dickinson’s poem #336, the narrator feels a strong sense of despair and laments at having lost the physical ability to see in one eye. The narrator reflects upon the importance of sight in experiencing nature and finds a better appreciation for it now that she has lost her sight. By the end of the poem however, the narrator experiences transcendence, as she comes to the realization that through the act of imagination she is able to see far more than the limited view her eyes provided her with. Through the act of poetic writing, the narrator is able to capture the beauty of nature and engrave in into her soul. In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s excerpt from “Nature”, he alludes to the significance in sight when it comes to it being able to merge the human soul with nature to create perfect unity, and as such he lays the groundwork for Dickinson’s ideas that are presented within her poem. Though Dickinson’s poem may initially seem transcendental, it can also be interpreted as a mixture of Emerson’s transcendental ideas and those that support the notion of imagination. Dickinson’s poem serves as a response to Emerson’s ideas because she adds on to his thoughts and unites his idea that there is oneness present in the world with the notion that imagination and sight serve as a bridge that connects human consciousness with nature to create this oneness that Emerson believes in.
One primary element of death is the experience of dying. Many of of us are scared of the thought of death. When we stop and think about what death will be like, we wonder what it will feel like, will it be painful, will it be scary? In Emily Dickinson's poem Because I Could Not Stop for Death, she focuses on what the journey into her afterlife will be like. Dickinson uses the first person narrative to tell her encounter with death. The form that she uses throughout the poem helps to convey her message. The poem is written in five quatrains. Each stanza written in a quatrain is written so that the poem is easy to read. The first two lines of the poem, “Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me;” (Clugston 2010), gives you a clear view of what the poems central theme is. Unlike most poems that are about death, Dickinson's attitu...
Emily Dickinson is one of the numerous poets who uses death as the subject of several of her poems. In her poem "Because I Could Not Stop for Death," Death is portrayed as a gentleman who comes to give the speaker. a ride to eternity. Throughout the poem, Dickinson develops her unusual. interpretation of death and, by doing so, composes a poem full of imagery that is both unique and thought provoking.
One of Emily Dickinson’s greatest skills is taking the familiar and making it unfamiliar. In this sense, she reshapes how her readers view her subjects and the meaning that they have in the world. She also has the ability to assign a word to abstractness, making her poems seemingly vague and unclear on the surface. Her poems are so carefully crafted that each word can be dissected and the reader is able to uncover intense meanings and images. Often focusing on more gothic themes, Dickinson shows an appreciation for the natural world in a handful of poems. Although Dickinson’s poem #1489 seems disoriented, it produces a parallelism of experience between the speaker and the audience that encompasses the abstractness and unexpectedness of an event.
“Because I could not stop for death,” is a poem written by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson. Dickinson’s style of writing is very different from other poets. She writes down what comes to mind and doesn’t focus her attention on the grammatical errors she has in her poem. She writes in prose, uses many hyphens, and has unconventional punctuations. This, however, is what makes Emily stand out from other poets. Throughout the poem, Dickinson uses free verse, and doesn’t have a pattern of rhyme or meter and most of the lines begin with an unstressed syllable. The last line of each stanza is always short and to the point. Dickinson uses alliteration, as well as, imagery in her poem. Dickinson portrays that although death is a natural stage in one’s life, it is not the end of one’s journey, but a new beginning.
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
Emily Dickinson had a fascination with death and mortality throughout her life as a writer. She wrote many poems that discussed what it means not only to die, but to be dead. According to personal letters, Dickinson seems to have remained agnostic about the existence of life after death. In a letter written to Mrs. J. G. Holland, Emily implied that the presence of death alone is what makes people feel the need for heaven: “If roses had not faded, and frosts had never come, and one had not fallen here and there whom I could not waken, there were no need of other Heaven than the one below.” (Bianchi 83). Even though she was not particularly religious, she was still drawn to the mystery of the afterlife. Her poetry is often contemplative of the effect or tone that death creates, such as the silence, decay, and feeling of hopelessness. In the poem “I died for beauty,” Dickinson expresses the effect that death has on one's identity and ability to impact the world for his or her ideals.
Dickinson's poetry is both thought provoking and shocking. This poem communicates many things about Dickinson, such as her cynical outlook on God, and her obsession with death. It is puzzling to me why a young lady such as Emily Dickinson would be so melancholy, since she seemed to have such a good life. Perhaps she just revealed in her poetry that dark side that most people try to keep hidden.
Emily Dickinson likes to use many different forms of poetic devices and Emily's use of irony in poems is one of the reasons they stand out in American poetry. In her poem 'Because I could not stop for Death,' she refers to 'Death' in a good way. Dickinson states in the poem that 'He kindly stopped for me --' (1103, 2). Death is not commonly known as being 'kind', which leads us to believe that Dickinson used this line to hint that death was a good thing. In the entire poem, she does not refer to death in a negative way. This shows more irony since death is often feared by many, either regarding themselves or other. This us of irony makes the poem more interesting to the reader.
Throughout Emily Dickinson’s poetry there is a reoccurring theme of death and immortality. The theme of death is further separated into two major categories including the curiosity Dickinson held of the process of dying and the feelings accompanied with it and the reaction to the death of a loved one. Two of Dickinson’s many poems that contain a theme of death include: “Because I Could Not Stop For Death,” and “After great pain, a formal feeling comes.”