Emily Dickinson's Because I Could Not Stop for Death

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Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was a very talented poet. Her poems contained deep emotions and continue to amaze her readers. She was born in Amherst Massachusetts on December 10, 1830 to Attorney Edward Dickinson and Emily Norcross Dickinson. Her mother was very emotionally accessible. Dickinson was an energetic and outgoing child. She attended Amherst Academy and Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. Her father took her out of school after a year at Mount Holyoke because he thought she had enough education. During Dickinson's mid-20's she became reclusive. She spent the rest of her life in the house she was born in. She was just like the rest of the women around her town. She kept house, gardened, cooked, and wrote in her spare time. Some scholars that study her work and her life theorize as to why Dickinson secluded herself. They believed that she was like this because she could not write about the world without first backing away from it and contemplating it from a distance. During her life she had very few friends. Dickinson would sometimes send her poems to Thomas Wentworth Higginson. He rejected her poems but published them after she died. She only had six or seven poems published during her lifetime but without her consent. Dickinson actually wrote over 17,000 poems. Unfortunately she died on May 15, 1886 due to Bright's disease, a kidney ailment, in the house she was born in. In Dickinson's poem "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" it obviously is about death. She says that death is always with us and it causes great pain but it also inspires people. She is saying to her readers that she wants them to view death as not being sad, but as being an inevitable change. It is silly to fear death and Dickinson wants her readers to a... ... middle of paper ... ...er readers on how to view death. Dickinson uses many ways to get her point across. She uses metaphors, imagery, and personification. Throughout her poem she refers to death as he, giving him a human form so people could look at it differently. She also uses metaphors, like setting sun, grazing grain, and children to represent different stages of life. The rhythm also sets the mood of the poem. Since it has a darker feeling to it, readers can get the right feeling and mood about her poem to understand it better. The poem worked very well for her readers. Dickinson has a very good way to reach her readers. Once you become a fan of her, you could never turn away from her work. She has a special talent when she writes. Many people are fans of her and it will continue that way. She will always be loved for her talent in writing and unique approach to topics.

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