Death. It is such a hard work to hear. Nobody likes hearing or learning about death, but it is a natural occurrence of life that everyone deals with. Specifically speaking, whenever death is brought up in the context of American Literature, Emily Dickinson is the first poet to come mind. It is easy to look at one of her claustrophobic poems and misinterpret the true message she wants readers to receive. Upon further analysis of these disturbingly detailed works, a reader like myself will find that not only is Dickinson obsessed with death, but also truth, religion, and suffering.
Emily Dickinson was an American poet born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Dickinson lived a very introverted and secluded life but that did not necessarily mean it couldn’t
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She had a strong opinion towards truth and how much of the truth humans can take. In poem 1129, Dickinson says “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—” (1), meaning don’t tell a lie. However, she follows that up by saying it is alright to sugar coat it a bit, only if the stretching of the truth will benefit the person hearing it. The word truth is capitalized in the original poem, Dickinson did not do this by accident. Dickinson often capitalized words to make them pop out on paper or to emphasize the meaning of them. By capitalizing the word “Truth”, Dickinson leads us to believe that telling the truth is the number one priority. If it just so happens that the truth needs to be altered slightly to please everyone hearing it, then she will not oppose. In poem 241, Dickinson says “I like a look of Agony, / Because I know it’s true—” (lines 1-2), another poem in which she depicts the value of the truth. She has felt pure agony and pain, and knows it is no joke. She did not use the word “truth” very lightly, so when she compares agony to the truth it only solidifies the reader’s thoughts that Dickinson was psychologically unstable and needed …show more content…
In her poetry she continuously would cut herself off mid-thought because she didn’t know what to expect from death. In my favorite Dickinson poem, poem 465, I finally understand the imagery of death she was trying to portray all along. She talks about herself in a room, surrounded by her loved ones. It is silent in the room as everyone has already cried all of the tears they possibly could. Everyone knows it is coming but they don’t know when, she is going to die. She feels a God like figure in the room who is there to take her away and refers to him as “the King”. Just as her “Windows failed” (15), her eyes stopped working, a fly came into the room. This fly can either be interpreted by the reader as a humorous edition, or as a real life reference. The moment someone dies is a big one, and one to be remembered. The fly in the room, buzzing around, interrupts this moment and distracts everyone for that split second that she passes away and they miss her death. In the real world, outside of poems, death is scary and Emily Dickinson knew that. She wasn’t necessarily afraid of it, but she knew the severity of it. This fly disrupted her thoughts while dying and made the experience painless and quick. Whether she would come to terms and admit it or not, Dickinson’s life revolved around death and she liked it that way until the grim reaper finally got ahold of
There is probably no one, among people, who has not considered death as a subject to think about or the events, people, and spirits that they would face after death. Also, since we were little kids, we were asking our parents what death is and what is going to happen after we die. People have always linked death with fear, darkness, depression, and other negative feelings, but not with Emily Dickinson, a reclusive poet from Massachusetts who was obsessed with death and dying in her tons of writings. She writes “Because I could not stop for Death” and in this particular poem she delivers a really different idea of death and the life after death. In the purpose of doing that, the speaker encounters death, which was personalized to be in the form of a gentleman suitor who comes to pick her up with his horse-drawn carriage for a unique death date that will last forever.
Death is a controversial and sensitive subject. When discussing death, several questions come to mind about what happens in our afterlife, such as: where do you go and what do you see? Emily Dickinson is a poet who explores her curiosity of death and the afterlife through her creative writing ability. She displays different views on death by writing two contrasting poems: one of a softer side and another of a more ridged and scary side. When looking at dissimilar observations of death it can be seen how private and special it is; it is also understood that death is inevitable so coping with it can be taken in different ways. Emily Dickinson’s poems “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” and “I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died” show both parallel and opposing views on death.
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 was born December 10th, 1830 in her family home on main street in Amherst, Massachusetts to her two parents Edward and Emily Norcross Dickinson. The homestead in which she was born was a family home owned by her grandparents who, soon after her sister’s birth in 1833, sold it out of the family. The Dickinson’s held residence in the home as tenants for the next seven years. Once her father’s political career took off, around the age she was nine, they moved to, and bought a new house in the same town. Dickinson was very close to her siblings, her older brother Austin and younger sister Lavinia. She had a strong attachment to her home and spent a lot of her time doing domestic duties such as baking and gardening. Dickinson also had good schooling experiences of a girl in the early nineteenth century. She started out her education in an Amherst district school, then from there she attended Amherst Academy with her sister for about seven years. At this school it is said that she was an extraordinary student with very unique writing talent. From there she attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary for a year in 1847. this year was the longest she had spent away from home. In her youth, Dickinson displayed a social s...
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.
Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst Massachusetts; a small farming town that had a college and a hat factory. There, she was raised in a strict Calvinist household while receiving most of her education at a boarding school that followed the American Puritanical tradition. She seldom left her hometown; virtually, her only contact with her friends came to be made through letters. As a young woman, Dickinson rejected comforting traditions, resisted male authority, and wrestled alone with her complex and often contrary emotions. Although she was claimed to be a high-spirited and active young woman, Dickinson began to withdraw from society in the 1850's. The many losses she experienced throughout her life, the death of her father, mother, close neighbors, and fr...
The two poems, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”, by Dylan Thomas and, “Because I Could Not Wait for Death”, by Emily Dickinson, we find two distinct treatments on the same theme, death. Although they both represent death, they also represent it as something other than death. Death brings about a variety of different feelings, because no two people feel the same way or believe the same thing. The fact that our faith is unknown makes the notion of death a common topic, as writers can make sense of their own feelings and emotions and in the process hope to make readers make sense of theirs too. Both Dickinson and Thomas are two well known and revered poets for their eloquent capture of these emotions. The poems both explore death and the
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 Dickinson wrote hundreds of poems during her lifetime that dealt with death. She seemed to have an almost morbid fascination with the subject. Her poem "I heard a Fly buzz - when I died" is one of the many poems she wrote about this ghastly topic. The symbols she used make this poem interesting because they can be interpreted on more than one level. The punctuation and capitalization used also give the poem an abstract quality. Like much of Dickinson's poetry, this poem is both startling and somber.
A recurring theme in Emily Dickinson’s poetry was death. Many years of Emily Dickinson’s adult years consisted of man...
As a child, Dickinson’s life revolved around her growing education and religious activities. Typical of this time period, she was expected to quietly abide by the strict puritan ways. Emily Dickinson was blessed with an education at Amherst Academy then at Mount Holyoke (Crumbley). During her yearlong study at Mount...
This use of irony makes the poem more interesting to the reader. Imagery is a big component of most works of poetry. Authors strive to achieve a certain image for the reader to paint in their mind. Dickinson tries to paint a picture of?death? in her own words,.
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.”