In “The Last Night that She lived”, Emily Dickinson expresses her distinct attitude toward the woman’s death through the use of diction, imagery, and personification. Dickinson’s “The Last Night that She lived” presents a mediation on the reaction of the speaker and those with her while they are confronted with death of a female friend. Strangely enough, Dickinson strays from the allusions of God and the afterlife and focuses on other diction, She begins her first stanza,” The last night that she lived, it was a common night, except for the dying.” This quote reveals that the death of this woman has no significance to the speaker. Dickinson uses the words “final”, “passed”, and “infinite” to illustrate death as a hault to the ones physical existence. Dickinson goes through a journey in the poem. In the beginning it seems that the speaker is in absolute denial, unable to express her feelings, but in the end she uses the word “we” in the last stanza to put emphasis on the death of the woman. Along with the use of diction, Dickinson uses imagery to illustrate her feelings in “The Last Night that She lived”. The imagery in this poem reflects a peaceful death. When the second stanza discusses the “smallest things”, the reader can interpret a family sitting around quietly …show more content…
She writes,” Too jostled were Our Souls to speak.” This quote describes the pain and despair that they felt when they heard the news of her death. Another example of personification is when she writes in the sixth stanza, ”Then lightly as a Reed Bent to the Water, struggled scarce- Consented, and was dead.” Through personification, Dickinson motions through the death of the lady. Alike the Reed, the lady died peacefully as a natural occurrence in life. The author has realized that was bound to happen and to not fight that fact. She has accepted death as it came and knows she can not do anything about
Although Dickinson addresses death, one of her prevalent themes, in this poem, she does it very differently. This poem describes the death of a loved one and the grief that ensues, something that many people experience sometime in their life. In other poems when Dickinson speaks of death it is about her own death or Death as a figure who has its own personality because she was quite intrigued by it. This poem deals more with a human experience and emotions that everyone can relate to.
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.
Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she lived the entirety of her life. It was here where she would oftentimes correspond with a small group of select friends, for whom she deeply cared about. Entering the late 1800s, she wrote most of the poems for which she is known today. A few years afterwards, various members of her family and several friends passed away, leaving her in a questionable emotional state and in turn making future readers wonder if the deaths of those close to her also affected her poetic inspirations. In her poem “The Last Night that She Lived,” Emily Dickinson features a female speaker who presents an image of a group of people waiting and pacing around a house as a woman lies on her deathbed-- image
I decided that the best way to comprehend Dickinson's message was to pay more attention to the feelings created and senses stimulated by reading and rereading the poem itself. I came to the conclusion that the author is in deep pain over the loss of a loved one or a very prominent part of her life in the past. Emily compares her feelings to those provoked while attending a funeral. She focuses most on the senses of touch and sound. She "felt a funeral", heard the beating of drums--rather odd sensations for someone to express unless they feel pain equal to that felt at the death of someone loved and needed. Therefore, it is obvious that Dickinson is writing this poem from experience, not observation.
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. This allowed her to spend her time writing and lamenting, instead of seeking out a husband or a profession. Eventually, she limited her outside activities to going to church. In her early twenties, she began prayed and worshipped on her own. This final step to total seclusion clearly fueled her obsession with death, and with investigating the idea of an afterlife. In “Because I could not stop for Death”, Dickinson rides in a carriage with the personification of Death, showing the constant presence of death in her life. Because it has become so familiar, death is no longer a frightening presence, but a comforting companion. Despite this, Dickinson is still not above fear, showing that nothing is static and even the most resolute person is truly sure of anything. This point is further proven in “I heard a Fly buzz”, where a fly disrupts the last moment of Dickinson’s life. The fly is a symbol of death, and of uncertainty, because though it represents something certain—her impending death—it flies around unsure with a “stumbling buzz”. This again illustrates the changing nature of life, and even death. “This World is not Conclusion” is Dickinson’s swan song on the subject of afterlife. She confirms all her previous statements, but in a more r...
Death was surprisingly kind for her “He kindly stopped for me”(Dickinson 2). Dickinson uses personification
The young girl who had passed on in Dickinson’s poem experiences the life elapse without her. “Because I could not stop for Death –He kindly stopped for me –” (Line 1-2). Death knows it was her time, but she didn't plead for him to take her. Death is portrayed as a kind, sensible
Dickinson’s poems centering on death and religion can be divided into four categories: those focusing on death as possible extinction, those dramatizing the question of whether the soul survives death, those asserting a firm faith in immortality, and those directly treating God's concern with people's lives and destinies.
There’s a common theme of death in her poetry. She speaks in first person in most of her writings, and it’s as if death is overcoming her. In “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”, a poem taking place exactly how the title sounds, we see that Dickinson was consumed of the idea of death. She was so consumed with the thought, that she felt a funeral in her head. Although it wasn’t like any other funeral, as we can see from the mourners walking back and forth, beatings of a drum, and ringings of church bells.
However, there seems to be a larger idea about death, similar to that of “I heard a Fly buzz-- when I died--,” in which Dickinson is trying to portray within the poem. Once again, the poem begins with a certain depiction of death as the speaker expresses that she “could not stop for Death” but that “He kindly stopped” for her. At the time, Death “knew no haste,” meaning that he did not mean any ill intent towards the speakers passing. However, the idea that death “kindly” stopped for the speaker, who “could not stop for” him, insinuates that the speaker was not ready for death to overtake her, but that death was going to take her anyway. Since death “knew no haste,” he wasn’t going to rush her death, but the speaker was definitely going to pass away. Additionally, the speaker had “put away / [her] labor,” suggesting that she was not going to try hard to avoid death, and the speaker had also put away “[her] leisure too”. “Leisure” is defined as ‘spare’ or ‘free’ time, so, if the speaker was to “put away” her “leisure,” then the speaker is demonstrating that she is reluctantly accepting the hands of death. Within the third stanza, it’s detailed that death’s carriage was passing by a School, “where Children strove” during recess. They passed “fields of gazing grain” and the “setting sun”. These
Much like, one of her poems “I measure every Grief I meet” she states “I wonder if it hurts to live – And if They have to try –And whether – could They choose between – It would not be – to die – “(lines 5-8). Here Dickinson is a lot clearer with the idea of death and putting the message more plain and upfront for us. Now knowing this and seeing her works here this can help us relate back to Dickinson’s ideas in “I felt a Funeral, in my
At times in her life, Emily Dickinson longed to die, to end her seemingly hopeless existence. Death occurred frequently in her time of the middle 1800’s, but compounded in her life especially. Mother, Father, lover, and several friends all died and left Dickinson with nothing else on her mind. Her poems display her queer relationship with death. At times, termination of her earthly life seemed almost a gift to her to end all trouble and carry her to Heaven.
Imagery is a big component to 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. Thomas A. Johnson, an interpretive author of Dickinson's work, says that ?In 1863 Death came into full statue as a person. ?Because I could not stop for Death? is a superlative achievement wherein Death becomes one of the greatest characters of literature? (Johnson). Dickinson's picture to the audience is created by making ?Death? an actual character in the poem. By her constantly calling death either ?his? or ?he,? she denotes a specific person and gender. Dickinson also compares ?Death? to having the same human qualities as the other character in the poem. She has ?Death? physically arriving and taking the other character in the carriage with him. In the poem, Dickinson shows the reader her interpretation of what this person is going through as they are dying and being taken away by ?Death?. Dickinson gives images such as ?The Dews drew quivering and chill --? and ?A Swelling of the Ground --? (14, 18). In both of these lines, Dickinson has the reader conjure up subtle images of death. The ?quivering an chill? brings to the reader's mind of death being ...
In a nutshell, this is a poem about the life of a human and its relation to death as well as eternity. The author describes her journey with death. She presents death as gentle although one that comes without warning. She decides to remain calm and enjoy the experience because she knows that she cannot stop
The various parts of the anatomy noted in the poem, such as the nerves, heart, and feet, are no longer part of one central being,but now moving through the acts of a meaningless ceremony. In essence, they are lifeless forms enacted in a trance. As the idea of a funeral ceremony subsides, the once living body’s form emerges. The “formal feeling” that comes after a great pain is actually no pain at all, but instead the loss of form, time, and space.