Analysis of Emily Dickinson's Because I Could Not Stop for Death

In Patricia Engle’s review of Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I Could Not Stop For Death”, Engle argues that Dickinson’s poem employs Death as a lover who takes whomever is reading the poem to “heaven”, if you will. She also posits the idea that our eventual death is just a state of mind and we do not all follow the same path to reach Death. The poem, at its core, is about the visceral fear of Death and not wanting to die. I disagree with Engle’s assessment. Engle’s take on Dickinson’s poem is an inaccurate one because it explains that Dickinson does not seem to be afraid of death, that Dickinson is very spiritually aware and even accepting of her eventual fate, and that Dickinson, or the speaker of the poem, has accepted death so he has “stopped” for her.

Dickinson starts the first stanza of the poem with, “Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me” (807). Clearly she was not ready to go, death simply took her by surprise and brought her busy life to a halt. This could be seen as a beautiful way to take on death because death is usually said in such a morbid tone and the fact she associated “kindly” with death makes it beautiful. The second line says, “The Carriage held but just Ourselves – and Immortality” (Dickinson 807). The author emphasizes Carriage, Ourselves, and Immortality. Dickinson seems to be talking about her own death chariot and by immortality, she believes her death is not the end, but rather as a step to eternal life.

"Because I could not stop for Death" is one of the most puzzling poems Emily Dickinson wrote. “Scholars who stress these subversive qualities note that this poet appropriated conventional language, images, and themes and twisted them, disrupting their usual meaning.” (Dunlap, 2) In this poem, she describes death in hindsight. She commentates the experience play by play, chronicling her actions and vision from the time he arrived to pick her up in his carriage to her final resting place. In the poem, the impression of death is not portrayed as scary or daunting, but rather more as tranquil and peaceful. In the poem, death took on the image of a person. Through personification, he was portrayed more like a male suitor picking up his companion for a date. Dickinson guided us to believe that the speaker in the poem is talking and describing her journey with death to us from beyond the grave. She leads us to believe that the speaker is ghost-like or a spirit who has accepted her death and content with her boundless eternity. It is not surprising that “Because I could not stop for Death” incites so much controversy in that it presents complex and multi-dimensional concepts of both life and death, both of which are too mysterious to be fully expressed. In “Because I could not stop for Death”, Dickinson does personify both death and Immortality as people, and presents the process of dying as eternal life. However in a bizarre twist, she also personifies life. She brings

In “Because I could not stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson, Dickinson personifies something I never thought could be personified: death. In the poem, death is a “he” who is on a carriage ride with the narrator to the narrator's death. In lines one and two, Dickinson writes, “Because I could not stop for Death-- He kindly waited for me.” This is personification because death cannot literally stop to wait for someone. Here, death is not associated with its usual connotations such as fear, but with peace and kindness, which is ironic. In line three, the poem reads, “The Carriage held but just Ourselves-- And Immortality.” In this line, immortality is also included in the carriage ride, contrasting death. This is personification because immortality

In “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”, Emily Dickins illustrates the death of the narrator and the process in which the death occurred. In the poem, the narrator is greeted by Death who seems to be civil and kind. At first, the narrator rather dismissed Death, however, due to the nature of Death, she had decided to ride along with him in a carriage. The narrator accepted the company of Death and they “slowly drove, [as] he knew no haste, and I had put away my labor, and my leisure too, for his civility” (Source A). Death was driving the narrator to her next destination in life and the narrator acknowledged this without any worry. At the end of life, death is a natural process to undergo and humans can’t escape it. In this section of the poem,

Personification is a type of figurative language one uses to give abstract ideas human-like characteristics. Dickinson uses personification in this poem because it allows the reader to understand death in a more intimate way. Death became so real to her and to her contemporaries because of the time in which she lived. Through her life experiences, the poet became intimate with death. Because of all the disease and epidemics in her lifetime, many of her loved ones passed away. These deaths were very "intense breaks in her life" (Murray). Some critics suggest that the death of her cousin was the inspiration for this poem (Semansky). In any event, death had a large impact on Dickinson's life. This impact explains why she writes so descriptively about it. In this poem, death is personified as a gentleman caller taking the lady out for a carriage ride. This personification gives the reader a better image of the writer's idea of the coming of death.

Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death” is a remarkable masterpiece that exercises thought between the known and the unknown. Critics call Emily Dickinson’s poem a masterpiece with strange “haunting power.”

Ms. Dickinson seemed very at ease with death as if it were but another point of our existence. In her later works she concentrated more on death because her own personal life was marked by a succession of deaths, loosing those that she was close to and these events in her life caused her to write about death as if it

In the poem “Because I could not stop for Death”, by Emily Dickinson the poet uses the rhetorical devices of personification, imagery, and irony to argue that death is not the end it is one step closer to eternity. Emily Dickinson uses personification in this poem, personification is a literary rhetorical device that gives non-human and non-living things human characteristics and qualities. “ Because I could not stop for Death-” , in the first line ‘Death’ is capitalized. Dickinson is giving death a proper name like a human. Due to her capitalizing the name the first reaction is that she is talking about an actual person or a person in a spiritual way.

In Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death “ (448), the speaker of the poem is a woman who relates about a situation after her death. The speaker personifies death as a polite and considerate gentleman who takes her in a carriage for a romantic journey; however, at the end of this poem, she finishes her expedition realizing that she has died many years ago.

“Because I could not stop for Death-” is the more famous of Dickinson’s works. The poem is her attempt to visualize the process of actually being dead. As a narrative, the unknown Speaker of the poem describes how the literalized manifestation known as Death “kindly stopped of me-”. Death picks the Speaker up in a carriage and they ride away together – “The Carriage held but just Ourselves — And Immortality.” In this way, Death has been compared to both a suitor and a seducer for the speaker. After all, the Speaker did not actually choose to die and was not even contemplating the end of life. Rather, Death chose the Speaker. The suiter/seducer interpretation provides a double-meaning wherein can be viewed as both the natural progression of life and also the destructive violation of it. Immortality is the third person

In Emily Dickinson’s poems, she uses personification to express her interpretation of death. In Apparently with no surprise, as the flower is at its play, the “frost beheads” it. “Beheads” suggests quick and absolute which applies to Emily Dickinson’s interpretation of death. In Because I could not stop for death, Emily Dickinson describes death as a gentleman that takes people out for a trip using “Carriage”. “Carriage” often mention in fairy tale that appears to be romantic which suggests gentleness of death. The poems discusses has different interpretations that Emily Dickinson had towards death, where one is cold and absolute and one is gentle and wooing and both are Emily’s interpretation of death but towards different groups of people.

Two of Emily Dickinson’s poems, “I heard a Fly buzz-when I died” and “Because I could not stop for Death” are both written about life’s stopping point, death. Although the poems are written by the same poet, both poems view death in a different manner. Between the two poems, one views death as having an everlasting life while the other anticipates everlasting life, only to realize it does not exist. While both poems are about death, both poems also illustrate that the outcome of death is a mysterious experience that can only be speculated upon with the anticipation of everlasting life.

Emily Dickinson once said, “Dying is a wild night and a new road.” Some people welcome death with open arms while others cower in fear when confronted in the arms of death. Through the use of ambiguity, metaphors, personification and paradoxes Emily Dickinson still gives readers a sense of vagueness on how she feels about dying. Emily Dickinson inventively expresses the nature of death in the poems, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (280)”, “I Heard a fly Buzz—When I Died—(465)“ and “Because I could not stop for Death—(712)”.

When the speaker states, “Because I could not stop for Death—/He kindly stopped for me—,” she implies that most people do not stop to think about their death. People go on with their busy lives and do not talk or think about death because they are afraid of it. So Death must stop and “kindly” ask people into his carriage. After she went into his carriage, Dickinson goes on to portray what the speaker sees as she is dying. Contrary to the speaker’s busy and fast life, line five