No two poems are ever exactly the same. This can be shown in two of Emily Dickinson’s poems “Hope” is the Thing with Feathers and Because I could not stop for Death. If you take these two poems and compare them you will find some similarities, but overall there are a lot more differences that set them apart. She may stick to writing about topics she knows like life, nature, love, death, and religion but she makes sure that the detail in each one is different and unique. In “Hope” is the Thing with Feathers and Because I could not stop for Death there are difference in the speaker, theme, and imagery used throughout the poems.
The first differences in these poems are the speakers. A speaker is the person that is delivering the poem (Literary
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In Because I could not stop for Death there is a speaker. In this poem the speaker is a female that is dead. This story is written in first-person so it sets you up to know that it is coming from someone’s perspective. Evidence shows that it is a woman that is telling a story because she is wearing a gown. Also, she is going on a date with death, and death she describes as a man in line 2. The woman in this poem is trying to share a moment in her life with you, and help you to really feel like you are there with all the detail and feelings …show more content…
Dickinson doesn’t have the speaker complain about dying and be trying to avoid it instead she is calm and just riding along with death. She sort of goes on a date with him and is driving around taking their time to get wherever they need to go. When you get to the end you realize that she is already dead, and that’s why she wasn’t fighting it, because she was already there. The speaker had come to terms with what had happened and was reliving the moment when it happened. As one would expect, dealing with death, it was darker than her poem about hope. This poem was really able to capture emotion of death and portray it in an easy way to
Dickinson gives us a joyous and happy view of death, which is like a kind gentleman that takes her on a journey. He is so civil, therefore. she willingly gives him her “labor” and “leisure”. She is not afraid of death, she instead receives it calmly. Whitman’s view is the contrary.
In literature, themes shape and characterize an author’s writing making each work unique as different points of view are expressed within a writing’s words and sentences. This is the case, for example, of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” and Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death.” Both poems focus on the same theme of death, but while Poe’s poem reflects that death is an atrocious event because of the suffering and struggle that it provokes, Dickinson’s poem reflects that death is humane and that it should not be feared as it is inevitable. The two poems have both similarities and differences, and the themes and characteristics of each poem can be explained by the author’s influences and lives. “Although Emily Dickinson is known as one of America’s best and most beloved poets, her extraordinary talent was not recognized until after her death” (Kort 1).
...the several differences they are still much more similar than one would confer. The main subject is death and a description of the end of her life in both of her literary works. Death is a strong and meaningful word. That often comes up in Emily Dickinson’s literary works, and is not a word not used by many poets. Emily Dickinson was a unique person and it greatly impacted her poems in a sharp and powerful way.
One primary element of death is the experience of dying. Many of of us are scared of the thought of death. When we stop and think about what death will be like, we wonder what it will feel like, will it be painful, will it be scary? In Emily Dickinson's poem Because I Could Not Stop for Death, she focuses on what the journey into her afterlife will be like. Dickinson uses the first person narrative to tell her encounter with death. The form that she uses throughout the poem helps to convey her message. The poem is written in five quatrains. Each stanza written in a quatrain is written so that the poem is easy to read. The first two lines of the poem, “Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me;” (Clugston 2010), gives you a clear view of what the poems central theme is. Unlike most poems that are about death, Dickinson's attitu...
Dickinson 's poem uses poetic devices of personification to represent death, she represents death as if it were a living being. Dickinson 's capitalization of the word “DEATH”, causes us to see death as a name, in turn it becomes noun, a person, and a being, rather than what it truly is, which is the culminating even of human life. The most notable use of this, is seen in the very first few lines of the poem when Dickinson says “Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me”. In her poem Dickinson makes death her companion, as it is the person who is accompanying her to her grave. She states that death kindly stopped for her and she even goes as far as to give death the human ability to stop and pick her up. The occasion of death through Dickinson use of personification makes it seem like an interaction between two living beings and as a result the poem takes on a thoughtful and light hearted tone. The humanization of death makes the experience more acceptable and less strange, death takes on a known, familiar, recognizable form which in turn makes the experience more relatable. As the poem
Although both poems were written by the same poet around the same time, their idea of what lies after death differs. In one of the poems, there appears to be an afterlife, while in the other poem, there is nothing. For example, in her work of, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”, Dickinson tells the reader a tale of a woman being taken away by Death. The Death would either take the women to hell or heaven, giving us our first indication of an afterlife. Also in the fifth stanza, Death and the woman make a stop before a house where they see “… The Roof was scarcely visible – The Cornice in the Ground-“; the woman is lying in the soil beneath, where her Soul and Spirits are looking towards the house, representing an afterlife. As the poem proceeds to the sixth stanza, the reader is given a conclusive evidence of the afterlife when the woman revives how it has been centuries since the death has come to visit...
In this poem, the woman did not just die but she has been dead. She is communicating from beyond the grave, by describing her journey with death. Death is portrayed as a gentleman who takes the speaker on a ride to eternity. Dickinson wrote this poem in a way that the reader is able to feel what the woman is going through. In this poem, death is seen as a passive and not as being something bad. Dickinson’s form and tone enables the reader to have an understanding of the message she is trying to convey. In this poem, each verse paints a piece of a picture for the reader and as you get to the end of the poem the picture is completed.
...humanize death and let the reader feel that death is a person who he can deal with. Also, she constantly uses imagery in her lines and she painted a perfect scene of what is going to happen when everybody dies, so the reader would have almost a clear image that will comfort him. Another literary element she was awesome in using is style. Dickinson’s organization had a hidden meaning of faith after death. Also, her punctuation use was so smart to show the eternity after death. Over all, using this combination of literary styles helped her to deliver her ideas easily and clearly after spending some time contemplating behind the lines. It is one death but different perspectives.
In Emily Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” she uses the structure of her poem and rhetoric as concrete representation of her abstract beliefs about death to comfort and encourage readers into accepting Death when He comes. The underlying theme that can be extracted from this poem is that death is just a new beginning. Dickinson deftly reassures her readers of this with innovative organization and management, life-like rhyme and rhythm, subtle but meaningful use of symbolism, and ironic metaphors.
When considering the structure of the poems, they are similar in that they are both written loosely in iambic pentameter. Also, they both have a notable structured rhyme scheme.
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 ...
The speaker is reflecting on her experience from life to death. In the first stanza, Dickinson (1863) writes “Because I could not stop for Death/He kindly stopped for me” (line 1). To me, this shows that the speaker was too busy to even think about the possibility of death. In life we are often bouncing from one subject to another, from one moment to the next that you are never really thinking about when death might come. Death is often in the shadows of our mind and is rarely a subject that is give any attention. Even the speaker was not thinking about the possibility of dying, it simply happened. You are reminded again that the speaker in the poem was not ready for death when Dickinson writes, “the Dews drew quivering and chill/ for only Gossamer, my Gown” (lines 14-15). Death came during the night to gather her up and she was not properly dressed for the
The obvious comparison between the three poems is the theme of death. Both poets, in these works and many others, display a fascination with the death of themselves as well as the death of peers, and loved ones. Both Frost and Dickinson experienced a great deal of death throughout each of their lives. Frost’s greatest loss was the death of his son, which is greatly depicted in his poem “Home Burial.” Dickinson suffered the loss of many friends and family. She spent a lot of her time in her room looking out upon the headstones of these people.
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.”
For Dickinson, on the contrary, death is not something unreal. As the author has written "Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me..." After reading these two lines the reader "imagines the picture of Death being a human which joins the author during the ride" . Dickinson tries to portray the characteristics of death in the poem. Stating that there is eternity after death, the author alludes both the possibility of the life after death and absolute zero-ness of it. Unlike Plath, Dickinson not only talks about the notion of death, but personalizes it. The reader feels that the author in fact...