The Thanatopsis of Emily Dickinson
Li Ke
School of Foreign Languages, CWNU, Nanchong, China, 637009
Abstract: Emily Dickinson is the greatest female poet in American literature who leaves a large number of questions to the researchers. She wrote about 1775 poems in her whole life. In these works, there are more than 500 of them concerned about “death”. In this essay we will talk about the thanatopsis of Emily Dickinson in her work. We will talk about the thanatopsis from three aspects: the classification, the thanatopsis in her works and the cause of her thanatopsis.
Keywords: Emily Dickinson; death; thanatopsis
I. Introduction
Death is always a common theme in literature in not only old days but also present time, but in most of the case, death is described as a bad and horrible thing. Emily Dickinson is one of the most outstanding poets who write about the theme of death. In American literature, she is considered as one of the top three poets with Edgar Allan Poe and Whiteman. Her poems always have special using of punctuation, rhythm and image in writing about religion, death, love, nature and poetic art. That is why she makes a significant contribution to the American literature, especially in the poems write about her own feelings and thoughts about death.
Different from the thoughts about death of other writers, Dickinson has her own
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She was the second child in her family which is very rich. After studied in Mount Holyoke Female Seminary for two weeks, Dickinson went back home and never went out in her rest of life. She is a total recluse, not leaving her house nor seeing even close friends. In her lonely life, Dickinson became sensitive and imaginative, and she spent most of the time in writing about 1800 poems. In Dickinson’s works, there are about 600 poems write about death, and all of these can be divided in two ways, the status of the speaker when faced death and the process of the
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.
Approaching Emily Dickinson’s poetry as one large body of work can be an intimidating and overwhelming task. There are obvious themes and images that recur throughout, but with such variation that seeking out any sense of intention or order can feel impossible. When the poems are viewed in the groupings Dickinson gave many of them, however, possible structures are easier to find. In Fascicle 17, for instance, Dickinson embarks upon a journey toward confidence in her own little world. She begins the fascicle writing about her fear of the natural universe, but invokes the unknowable and religious as a means of overcoming that fear throughout her life and ends with a contextualization of herself within both nature and eternity.
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)”.
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 is one of the great visionary poets of nineteenth century America. In her lifetime, she composed more poems than most modern Americans will even read in their lifetimes. Dickinson is still praised today, and she continues to be taught in schools, read for pleasure, and studied for research and criticism. Since she stayed inside her house for most of her life, and many of her poems were not discovered until after her death, Dickinson was uninvolved in the publication process of her poetry. This means that every Dickinson poem in print today is just a guess—an assumption of what the author wanted on the page. As a result, Dickinson maintains an aura of mystery as a writer. However, this mystery is often overshadowed by a more prevalent notion of Dickinson as an eccentric recluse or a madwoman. Of course, it is difficult to give one label to Dickinson and expect that label to summarize her entire life. Certainly she was a complex woman who could not accurately be described with one sentence or phrase. Her poems are unique and quite interestingly composed—just looking at them on the page is pleasurable—and it may very well prove useful to examine the author when reading her poems. Understanding Dickinson may lead to a better interpretation of the poems, a better appreciation of her life’s work. What is not useful, however, is reading her poems while looking back at the one sentence summary of Dickinson’s life.
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 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.
In poetry, death is referred as the end of literature and it is associated with feeling of sorrows. However Emily Dickinson demonstrates that death is not the end of literature or feeling of sadness but death is a new element of inspiration in poetry and is the beginning of a new chapter in our life. In the poem ‘’Because I Could Not Stop for Death’, she discusses the encounter of a women with death, who passed away centuries ago. Dickenson uses metaphors and similes to show that the process of dying can be an enjoyable moment by appreciating the good moments in life, and by respecting death rather than fearing it. Also Dickinson portrays death in a humorous way as she compares it to man seducing her to go to her death as well, to childhood games that show the innocence of this encounter (Bloom). The poem is a reflection of how unpredictable death can be. Death is a scary process in life that should not be feared because it should be celebrate as new start.
As a recluse, Emily Dickinson probably had a lot of time to think about concepts like death, loss, and failure, as well as more happy subjects such as gain, life, and poetry. Several of her poems are dedicated to this contrast of death and life; namely, “Because I could not stop for Death.” Several themes are carried throughout this poem, exploring various different concepts of life, and the resulting Death. Starting with Dickinson climbing into a carriage with Death and Immortality, they slowly roll through an English countryside, while she watches life flow past. Finally, she notices the direction they are headed, and puts on solid resolve to face it.
Emily Dickinson is one of the most famous authors in American History, and a good amount of that can be attributed to her uniqueness in writing. In Emily Dickinson's poem 'Because I could not stop for Death,' she characterizes her overarching theme of Death differently than it is usually described through the poetic devices of irony, imagery, symbolism, and word choice.
Grand thoughts and ideas usually require grand length and depth; a powerful message is best relayed through a powerful analysis. This literary formality is an understood truth among most writers and poets, and their knowledge of this principle helps readers to understand what messages and themes are being conveyed. Emily Dickinson challenges this norm by providing a short but poignant poem about something as meaningful as the concept of faith. The poem is broken up into two short stanzas, with the first acting as an analogy to the second. This comparison allows the reader to understand the true meaning. Containing only forty-four words, the poem eloquently states that faith cannot be explained or debated; it is simply an emotional response to the surroundings.
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.”