An Amateur’s Exploration of, “Because I could not stop for Death”

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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 this poem, the speaker’s encounter with death is similar to a courtship. In the first stanza of the poem the character Death is introduced as playing the role of the speaker’s suitor. In this way, this poem about death takes on an unexpected light tone, giving the reader a sense that the speaker is content to die and able to approach it with a sense of calm. Death’s carriage is also introduced in this stanza serving as a metaphor for the way in which we make our final passage to death. The final line in this stanza introduces a third passenger in the carriage. Both the uses of Immortality, the third passenger, as well as the use of Death are examples of personification. Emily Dickinson expresses her expectations of what happens after death by describing a death scene that is familiar to the living. In the third stanza Dickinson uses familiar imagery to describe the three stages of life. The sequence of scenes the carriage passes on its journey is an allegory for the normal progression of life from beginning to end. From this the read... ... middle of paper ... ...represent the stages of one’s life. She focuses on the most extreme sense of ends-death, and rejects it as final. What the poem arrived at is that some aspect of life or form of existence continues after death. Works Cited Abbott, Collamer M. "Dickinson's Because I Could Not Stop For Death." Explicator 57.4 (1999): 212. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 5 May 2014. Dickenson, Emily. “Because I could not stop for Death (#712)” Puchner, Martin, et al. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 3rd ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. Print. Engle, Patricia. "Dickinson's BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH." Explicator 60.2 (2002): 72. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 5 May 2014. Shaw, M.N. "Dickinson's Because I Could Not Stop For Death." Explicator 50.1 (1991): 20. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 6 May 2014.

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