Emily Dickinson was an American poet from Massachusetts, who lead a strange but mysterious life. She was a very reluctant woman she stayed in her room and rarely talked to anyone, she had an amazing talent she could write poetry. Emily Dickinson wrote over a thousand poems throughout her life that later after her death were published. Dickinson’s poems were brought to life due to her weird but wonderful use of various literary terms. Majority of Dickinson's poems reflect her lifelong fascination with illness, dying and death. Her poems included lengthy discussion of death by many methods: crucifixion, drowning, hanging, suffocation, freezing, premature burial, shooting, stabbing and guillotining. Dickinson’s poems are now in this day and age characterized by her unusual style and view of the world.
The first Stanza of Dickinson's poem says “After great pain, a feeling comes-” This means the overall feeling of death of a loved one is almost indescribable. A feeling that is upon one where they are almost in a n unresponsive state. Death or life isn't mentioned in this first stanza but, as the poem continues one can infer that Dickinson is talking about life. “great pain” describes the feeling when one looses a loved one. Dickinson also writes about a “formal feeling” or the feeling after the death that one feels for the rest of their lives, like being incomplete. Dickinson continues and writes “The Nerves sit ceremonious like Tombs-” This means the behavior one might practice at a funeral which would relate to “Nerves” sitting ceremoniously. At a funeral there's not much movement, ones is overcome with sadness and the nerves are still like tombs. The third line states that the Heart, which is capitalized is “Stiff” and that it is...
... middle of paper ...
...ptance of it.
In conclusion, Emily Dickinson's 341st poem includes the themes of life versus death and nature versus man. This poem was the explanation of the feelings one feels at the death of loved ones throughout the three stanzas. Dickinson urges readers not to be caught up in the superficiality of society's attitude and come to terms with the death of others and oneself.
Mikal Hathaway
English 3 Honors
Ms. Lawton
December 1 2013
Works Cited
Gelpi, Albert. "AFTER GREAT PAIN: The Inner Life Of Emily Dickinson (Book)." American Literature 44.1 (1972): 157. Academic Search Premier. Web. 26 Nov. 2013.
The Undiscovered Continent: Emily Dickinson and the Space of the Mind. (Indiana University Press, 1983.) Copyright © 1983 by Suzanne Juhasz.
SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Dickinson’s Poetry.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2002. Web. 26 Nov. 2013.
Although Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman had different styles of writing, they did convey the same attitude and acceptance toward death. Both Dickinson’s “712” and Whitman’s “From “Song of Myself” poems showed death was something natural that had to happen and we need to accept it at a certain point in life. Both wrote poems about it as if it were no big deal, but something peaceful. Both poets used much imagery to convey this message very clear to their audience.
Phillips, Elizabeth. " The Histrionic Imagination." Emily Dickinson: Personae and Performance. University Park and London: Penn State, 1919.
Emily Dickinson was one of the greatest woman poets. She left us with numerous works that show us her secluded world. Like other major artists of nineteenth-century American introspection such as Emerson, Thoreau, and Melville, Dickinson makes poetic use of her vacillations between doubt and faith. The style of her first efforts was fairly conventional, but after years of practice she began to give room for experiments. Often written in the meter of hymns, her poems dealt not only with issues of death, faith and immortality, but with nature, domesticity, and the power and limits of language.
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)”.
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.
Emily Dickinson's Obsession with Death. Emily Dickinson became legendary for her preoccupation with death. All her poems contain stanzas focusing on loss or loneliness, but the most striking ones talk particularly about death, specifically her own death and her own afterlife. Her fascination with the morose gives her poems a rare quality, and gives us insight into a mind we know very little about. What we do know is that Dickinson’s father left her a small amount of money when she was young.
In this poem, the woman did not just die but she has been dead. She is communicating from beyond the grave, by describing her journey with death. Death is portrayed as a gentleman who takes the speaker on a ride to eternity. Dickinson wrote this poem in a way that the reader is able to feel what the woman is going through. In this poem, death is seen as a passive and not as being something bad. Dickinson’s form and tone enables the reader to have an understanding of the message she is trying to convey. In this poem, each verse paints a piece of a picture for the reader and as you get to the end of the poem the picture is completed.
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.
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on 10th December, 1830, in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts. As a young child, she showed a bright intelligence, and was able to create many recognizable writings. Many close friends and relatives in Emily’s life were taken away from her by death. Living a life of simplicity and aloofness, she wrote poetry of great power: questioning the nature of immortality and death. Although her work was influenced by great poets of the time, she published many strong poems herself. Two of Emily Dickinson’s famous poems, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” and “I Heard a Fly Buzz- When I Died”, are both about life’s one few certainties, death, and that is where the similarities end.
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.
Dickinson, Emily. ?Because I could not stop for Death.? Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. Kennedy, X.J., Dana Gioia. New York, NY: Pearson Longman, 2005, 1103.
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...
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.”