Death in Emily Dickinson's Because I Could Not Stop for Death, I Heard A Fly Buzz-When I Died, and I Felt A Funeral In My Brain

Death in Emily Dickinson's "Because I Could Not Stop for Death," "I Heard A Fly Buzz-When I Died," and "I Felt A Funeral In My Brain"

Emily Dickinson's poems "Because I Could Not Stop for Death",

"I Heard A Fly Buzz-When I Died", and "I Felt A Funeral In

My Brain" all deal with one of life's few certainties, death.

Dickinson's intense curiosity towards mortality was present in

much of her work, and is her legacy as a poet.

"Because I could Not Stop for Death" is one of Emily Dickinson's

most discussed and famous poems due to its ambiguous, and unique

view on the popular subject of death. Death in this poem is told

as a woman's last trip, which is headed toward eternity. This poem

helps to characterize and bring death down to a more personal

level. Different from the more popular views of death being

brutal and cruel, Dickinson makes death seem passive and easy.

The theme of the poem being that death is natural and unstoppable

for everybody, but at the same time giving comfort that it is

not the end of a soul's journey. The reader can recognize the

poem's theme by analysing its voice, imagery, figures of speech,

form, diction and especially symbolism; all of which help the

reader to understand the poem's meaning. The precise form that

Dickinson uses throughout the poem helps convey her message to

the reader. The poem is written in five quatrains. The way in

which each stanza is written in a quatrain gives the poem unity and makes it easy to read. "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" starts to gives the reader a feeling of forward

movement throughout the second and third quatrain. For example, in

line 5, Dickinson begins death's journey with a slow, forward movement,

which can be seen as she writes, "We...

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...ngs are supposed to go when we die. Or we just assume that we

will experience a peaceful extinguishment of life. The persona of these

poems signifies that, even though we might have plans about the end,

death is uncontrollable and unimaginable.

Death is the supreme unknown; Mankind naturally fears what is unknown.

Emily Dickinson is no different. Her works "Because I Could Not Stop

For Death", "I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died", and "I Felt A Funeral In My

Brain" all explored the subject of death. She was naturally scared of the

thought of dying and explored many of the great questions in her poetry.

Is there a Heaven or an afterlife? If you kill yourself will you still

go to heaven? Is it your fate when you die? These are just some of the

questions that people have asked themselves, and because Emily Dickinson

is deceased, she now knows all the answers.