Priyal Patel
Ms. Thomas
American Literature (7)
28 January, 2014
Poetry Seminar
2. Summary
“712” by Emily Dickinson is about a woman's encounter with Death. Since she is not ready to carry on she asks Death to wait and he abides to the request. For centuries, they share a peaceful journey through places on Earth until the sun sets and the reality of death sets in. The last destination the woman is brought to, is a home which is buried in the ground hinting it is her burial home.
3. Connotations and Denotations:
Civility-formal politeness
Death’s chivalrous manner emphasizes the peaceful mood that the journey begins with.
Gossamer-something very light and thin
This article of clothing is way too thin to be worn especially since it is in the night time and provides no warmth.
Tippet-a scarf or shawl
The narrator is merely covered in this light piece of clothing further providing evidence that she is unaware about the cold reality of death.
Tulle-soft material, almost like net
This word is an extra detail to show how inadequate the tippet is for the narrator especially since she is wearing it at a time of cold weather.
*Gossamer, Tulle and Tippet share the meaning of being thin in clothing*
Cornice: ornamental molding around the wall and ceiling of a building
In this poem the cornice is in the ground showing that there is a home or a building deep under the ground as the cornice is normally found at the same level of the roof.
4. Literary Devices
One of the major literary devices used (lines 1-3,5,8,11,13,14) was personification to give death human characteristics. In line one, the “d” in death is capitalized to show it is a proper noun and the name of a person. Throughout the poem, Dickinson effectively uses imagery to create a pict...
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...ed to see many of her loved ones pass on which stood as an inspiration and place to vent her emotions out on.
Emily Dickinson was emotions were kept a secret although she faced tragic things such as deaths and loss in lovers. Thus, her tone reflected her feelings which often were heavy-hearted and cheerless.
7. Questions
Why does Dickinson include children playing and grass fields as landmarks of the journey that the woman and Death travel to?
Why isn’t the narrator properly clothed when the sun sets and the cool air and darkness comes in? What is the significance of this?
Why does Dickinson have her characters go on a journey that seems to be endless if it is going on for centuries?
Why does the poet personify death to be relaxed if many are afraid and horrified by the thought of it?
How can death be immortal if the purpose of it is to end one’s life on Earth?
8.
Emily Dickinson is a famous English poet. Born in the 1800’s, she began writing poetry about death to describe feelings. Poetic techniques such as imagery and personification feature in one of her most famous poems, “Because I Could not Stop for Death”.
He also made us experience the awe and misery of the mother by describing her “trembling steps” when she went to read. the letter, her “sickly white face and dull in the head”. In addition to her state after her son’s death, she was “presently drest in. black”, “her meals untouched”, “fitfully sleeping often waking” and “sleeping”. her “deep longing.to be with her dead son”. Dickinson uses imaginative and figurative language.
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
“But it is not the fear, observe, but the contemplation of death; not the instinctive shudder and struggle of self-preservation, but the deliberate measurement of the doom, which are great or sublime in feeling” (John Ruskin). Human beings never stop making efforts to explaining, understanding and exploring the meaning of the death, and death became an important topic in human’s literature. According to the scientific definition “death is the state of a thermodynamic bio-system in which that thermodynamic system cannot obtain non-spontaneously energy from the environment and organize non-spontaneously the energy obtained from the environment” (Nasif Nahle). Which means that all human beings fundamental biological systems are stop working after
Firstly, the narrator gives little detail throughout the whole story. The greatest amount of detail is given in the first paragraph where the narrator describes the weather. This description sets the tone and mood of the events that follow. Giving the impression that a cold, wet, miserable evening was in
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, who was 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 a form of gentleman suitor who comes to pick her up with his horse-drawn carriage for a unique death date that will last forever. In fact, she seems completely at ease with the gentleman. Additionally, their journey at the beginning seems pretty peaceful; as they pass through the town, she sees normal events such as children who are playing, fields of grain, and a sunset. After this, dusk takes place and the speakers gets chilly because she was not ready for this journey and she did not wear clothes that would make her feel warm. Consequently, readers get the idea that death is not a choice, so when it comes, that is it. Emily Dickinson, in her poem “Because I could not stop for Death,” uses personification, imagery, and style to deliver her positive and peaceful idea of death and life after death.
...h picks up the speaker in a horse drawn carriage “And Immortality” (4) joins them. The poet is implying that with death comes immorality, just not of the sort that one reads about in Twilight novels. Indeed, Dickinson is not referring to temporal perpetuity, but a spiritual eternity. Besides that, earthly pleasures and acts appear to have lost their appeals for the speaker. When she tells of how they “passed the school, where children strove / At recess, in the ring”, notice how the word strove is used in place of the word play, indicating that life is a struggle. Death “kindly stopped for [her]” (2), and she though him very civil for doing so. The last intriguing aspect to this poem is the way Dickinson wrote it so that it included no allusions to anything specifically religious, any reader, no matter their beliefs, could in someway relate to the theme of the poem.
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 life led by Emily Dickinson was one secluded from the outside world, but full of color and light within. During her time she was not well known, but as time progressed after her death more and more people took her works into consideration and many of them were published. Dickinson’s life was interesting in its self, but the life her poems held, changed American Literature. Emily Dickinson led a unique life that emotionally attached her to her writing and the people who would read them long after she died.
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
In the beginning of the poem, Dickinson writes, "Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me." Not only does Dickinson portray death as a man, but she does so in a way that the man is not perceived in a negative way. She writes as if the man is her lover, kindly stopping in a way as if he was to suit her. Death is not our enemy, but instead is our companion. In the next two lines, in lines three and four, Dickinson then uses a metaphor to compare a carriage to death.... ...
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 ...
Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death” is a remarkable masterpiece that exercises thought between the known and the unknown. In Dickinson’s poem, “Because I could not stop Death,” there is much impression in the tone, in symbols and in the use of imagery that over flow with creativity. One might undoubtedly agree to an eerie, haunting, if not frightening, tone and use of symbolism in Dickinson’s poem.
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)”.
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.”