Analysis Of Emily Dickinson's Because I Could Not Stop For Death

The poetry of Emily Dickinson is shrouded in an air of mystery, and rightly so. The fact that not much is known about Dickinson’s personal life makes it somewhat difficult to grasp her strikingly complex subject matter and unusual writing style. Her rebellion of the traditional poetic form seems to have made it rather difficult to publish any of her work—Norton tells us that she did, in fact, try to have some of her poetry published, but that she was unhappy with how the editors tried to make the format of her work appear more conventional (“Emily Dickinson” 1661). When her poems finally were published following her death in 1886, it was through the tedious efforts of some of her closest friends. Initially, Dickinson’s poetry was disliked by critics who thought that her verse “violated the laws of meter” (“Emily Dickinson” 1662), but they began to gain popularity in the mid-1900s when Dickinson’s niece resumed publication of the poems. Without such efforts, Dickinson’s work may not have made it to the eyes and ears of audiences today. While her poems still cause some confusion among her readers, she is nonetheless revered as one of America’s greatest poets.

It is certainly a beautiful poem with a beautiful sound, but the meaning can be construed in a few different ways. For example, one may take it as a scene in which the speaker communicates from beyond the grave, recounting how Death stopped for her because she “could not stop for Death” (Dickinson 1683). In this case, the poem’s speaker has already died, and is describing how Death came and whisked her away from the world of the living. The final stanza of the poem solidifies the idea that the speaker is in fact