Emily Dickinson Research Paper

Emily Dickinson is known for the common theme of death in her writings. She uses various metaphors in her poems to demonstrate this theme of death. In her poems, “I Cannot Live With You,” “ My Life Had Stood A Loaded Gun,” and “Because I Could Not Stop For Death.” Dickinson shows the theme of death as well as some other themes that can also point to death. In this way these poems, like all of her work, are similar yet different. They are similar in the way that she writes about death but they are also different because she describes death differently in each one. Dickinson uses many metaphors but sticks to the common themes of death and love. Growing up in Massachusetts, Emily Dickinson is thought of by her father to be a happy and energetic

child. This is obviously not reflective in her writings, where she seems to be a dark and sad person. Her father's death is her first step into this dark mentality, at this time she starts to write notes to herself about things like death. This also leads her to live like a recluse, leaving her home rarely. In her life, Dickinson publishes seven of her poems herself. But, before dying she asks her family to burn the rest of her poems. Thankfully, they go through with publishing them anyway. In Emily Dickinson’s poetry, she uses the theme of death as a metaphor, an example of this can be seen in “I Cannot Live With You,” “ My Life Had Stood A Loaded Gun,” and “Because I Could Not Stop For Death.”
In one of Dickinson’s poems, “I Cannot Live With You,” she is writing to show that she loves someone so much that she could not live nor die with them. The poem is set up to represent the different stages in life according to the Christian paradigm, which is life, death, and resurrection (Estes 1835). Dickinson writes this in first person as if she is talking to a lover and says in the poem that she cannot live with her lover and states the reasons why (Estes 1835). She uses metaphors to explain this in the beginning, Dickinson says “I cannot live with You/ It would be Life/ And Life is over there/ Behind the Shelf” (Dickinson 317). This metaphor is showing that she cannot live with her significant other because she says that it would not be life. When Dickinson says this, she is using another metaphor to say that life would be too good if she lives with him, so good that it is not like life at all. Towards the middle of the poem, Dickinson mentions, “I could not die with You/ For One must wait/ To shut the Other’s Gaze down/ You could not” (Dickinson 317). By saying this, she is pointing to the idea that she could not die with him either because neither he or she would want to die first and have to live without the other one. At the end of the poem, she says, “Nor could I rise with You/ Because Your Face/ Would put out Jesus’/ That New Grace” by saying this, Dickinson means that she cannot go to heaven with him because she would be focused on him and not Jesus (Dickinson 317). This poem demonstrates the theme of death in the way that the narrator is so in love with this man that it is not even like life at all if she were to live with him, but in the same way she cannot live with him either.
The poem “My Life Had Stood A Loaded Gun” by Emily Dickinson is different than most of her writing, but it is also the same because the theme of death is used to show the gun’s power after the owner is deceased.

This poem is interesting in the way that Dickinson portrays death. It is different because she personifies the gun as a person. This is not a common theme seen in Dickinson’s writing. In most of her poetry, she usually includes two characters: one of which is the speaker, and the other is often a male figure, lover, God or both (Gelpi). Instead, in this poem, Dickinson follows the theme of ownership, and she explains that the gun must be claimed in order to live to its full potential. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker's life is a loaded gun and has the potential to be powerful, and it is waiting for the owner to come along to give it its full potential. To start the poem, Dickinson says, “My Life had stood a Loaded Gun/ In Corners till a Day/ The Owner passed identified/ And carried Me away” (Dickinson as ctd. In Cuellar). In this quote Dickinson shows how the gun is personified and how the owner claims it. In addition, the gun also serves as a metaphor for immortality since the gun does not have the power to die. Dickinson shows this idea in that it is not the gun necessarily, but “it is the poem that does not have ‘the power to die,’ a testament to Dickinson’s belief in the immortality of the word. But the poetic gun does have ‘the power to kill’ others.” (Priddy 231). At the beginning of the poem, the gun thinks that it has to have an owner to claim its full potential, but in the end, the gun realizes that it does not, and it gains a sense of independence. In one of the lines in the poem, Dickinson says, “Though I than He/ may longer live He longer must than I/ For I have but the power to kill,/ Without the power to die” (Dickinson as ctd. In Cuellar). The owner has the power to die, but the gun does not, so when the owner leaves, the gun is

able to go on and still have the power. This poem demonstrates Dickinson’s common theme of death by showing that, in order for the gun to reach its full potential, the owner has to die first. At first the gun thinks that it needs the owner for the power but it is not until the owner dies that the gun realizes that it had the potential the whole time.
“Because I Could Not Stop For Death” is one of Dickinson’s most popular poems. In the poem, she talks about the day death comes knocking on her door (Jolly 405). Not only is it her most popular work, but also it “has been called by Allen Tate one of the perfect poems in English!” (Priddy 214) In the poem, when Dickinson talks about death, she personifies death as a male and a suitor. She also says that immortality is in the carriage, and it is seen as the chaperone (Priddy 214). The poem starts with Dickinson saying “Because I could not stop for Death/ He kindly stopped for me/ The Carriage held but just Ourselves/ And Immortality” in this line, she is saying that she does not have time for death, so he makes time and stops for her (Dickinson). Personification is one of the themes that Dickinson uses first this theme is shown when she describes both death and immortality as people. Moving forward in the poem after death picks her and they start the journey, “the reader learns that the journey was leisurely and they the speaker did not mind the interruption from her tasks because death was courteous” (Jolly 405). What she means by this is that dying is easy and she does not mind it it takes her by surprise, but when it comes, she is ready, and she is not bothered by it. In the poem, Dickinson takes the readers on a journey through her life, the places that are mentioned are supposed to represent the different stages of life. The school, their first stop, can be seen as childhood. The fields of gazing grain can be seen as adulthood, and finally, the sun setting represents the end of life (Priddy 215). This poem is centered around the theme of death and brings the reader through the death of the narrator and gives an insight on how they believe death to be like.
Overall, Emily Dickinson uses many metaphors and themes in her writing. One of the biggest metaphors in her writing is death it is seen in almost in all of her works. In “I Cannot Live With You,” she uses life, death, and resurrection as metaphors. She uses these to show how she loves the male figure in the poem she says that she cannot live with, die with, or rise up with him for different reasons but mostly because she loves him. Another one of her poems, “My Life Had Stood A Loaded Gun,” is a little different than most of her other poems, and instead of following her common theme of love, she uses the theme of ownership. She says that the gun is not given its power until it is claimed, but the gun later realizes that it has the power to kill but not to die. The gun gains a sense of independence when the owner is gone, and it goes on without the owner. Lastly, one of Dickinson's best and most commonly known works, “Because I Could Not Stop For Death,” shows the theme of death in the most interesting way. The speaker in the poem takes the readers on a ride through her life all the way until death. She describes death and immortality as people, and she says that the ride is leisurely and easy. In all of Dickinson's work, she describes death in different ways, but she uses metaphors to do this her metaphors about death are the way readers can recognize her work.