Analysis Of Live Every Moment By Emily Dickinson

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Live Every Moment
Emily Dickinson is an American poet who encourages individuals to embrace the idea of death rather than fearing it. Having grown up in a city with a very high mortality rate Dickinson accepts how common death is in the natural life cycle and depicts this in her poetry. Although a very isolated individual, Dickinson is able to describe her acceptance and comfort with the idea of death in her poems and convey them to her readers. Dickinson’s poems encourage readers to live every moment as it were their last because it is unknown when death will come. Have courage when facing death, rather than fearing it. Dickinson illustrates that death is not something to be feared or desired but something that is natural.
In Dickinson’s
In the poem, “If I Should Die,” the speaker is curious as to what would happen if they were to die (Academy of American Poets). Death is a common fear. The speaker emphasizes that the idea of death is a natural, peaceful thing that everyone will encounter at the end of life. There is no need to fear death but embrace it and the time that’s allotted in living it. Within the poem, Dickinson creates a picture of a person dying, and another person living and just how that will affect time, nature, and the earth (Moorhead). Moorhead highlights Dickinson’s use of imagery in proving her point of time. “And time should gurgle on” proves that time doesn’t stop when a person dies, but that time will go on after one’s death. Examples are used in the poem to explain how life will be like on earth after death happens; “Tis sweet to know that stocks will stand / when we with daisies lie” ensures that once death does come for an individual, that eventually nature will die too. People have always believed that after a plant dies it will “always grow back,” and this is usually true. Dickinson implies that this idea is the same for humans as well. Once one human is taken from the world, shortly another will be born into the world; it’s a continuance of the natural cycle of nature (Moorhead). The ending line of the poem, “conduct the pleasing scene,” conveys that when you view materialistic earth, a natural death is a pleasing thing to see since it’s the natural way of life. Dickinson paints a positive outlook on death with the use of imagery and makes the idea of death seem more favorable in the eyes of her readers. Death is in fact an inescapable fact of our existence and by giving multiple examples on how life will go on after someone’s death, the reader’s are reassured that what they leave behind will continue on. The speaker is calm knowing the world will continue to function and continue on after dying.

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