How To Live Life
“Because I could not stop for Death,” by Emily Dickinson establishes the conflict between the way to live life and death. By using figures of speech such as personification and imagery, the speaker reminds us that life is short, so we must live it to the fullest because we never know when death will come to us.
The speaker uses personification, the attribution of human traits to nonhuman objects, to describe how death occurs in our lives. For example, the speaker states, “Because I could not stop for Death/ He kindly stopped for me.” Giving death the characteristic of kindness and saying that it stopped for the speaker reveals how death is natural and will happen to everyone at some point, even though some might not expect
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By using imagery, we are able to understand and experience the details in the poem better. For example, the speaker states, “We passed the School where Children strove/ At Recess ‒ in the Ring.” This represents one’s youth. By depicting an image of children playing at recess, we are reminded of our childhood and how lively and carefree we were. The speaker then states, “We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain.” This paints a bright, glistening image of work and a great harvest, which symbolizes a thriving adulthood. By using these images, the speaker illustrates how we should live life and how, she, herself should have lived her life. The poem then makes a transition to the speaker’s experience of nearing death. The speaker states, “We passed the Setting Sun/ Or rather ‒ He passed us.” This helps us visualize an image of the day ending and the exhaustion we experience after a day’s work; this represents death. In addition, the speaker states, “The Dews drew quivering and chill,” which appeals to our sense of touch and gives off a feeling of coldness, loneliness, and emptiness. This shows how the blessing of life, which is represented by the dews, was wasted, thus resulting in desolation. This turn in the poem portrays how the speaker realizes that she is nearing death, and because of her misimpression that life is long and that death will take time before it happens, she
Imagery is used by the author to illustrate immortality. As the future comes to the young woman, the reader visualizes, “rain failing on the lawns of her children” (Strand, 1990). Strand uses this statement to emphasize how the young women’s children mourn over her death, as a way to imply that one is immortal in the memories of a loved one. In the third stanza, Strand introduces a man who is writing a poem about the young woman, “thinking of death, thinking of him thinking of her” (Strand, 1990). As the man
Death is inevitable; it should not be feared but instead accepted, and this is the main idea and theme explored in Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death.” In the poem, Death is personified as a gentleman who “kindly stopped [stops] for me [her]” (Dickinson 2), “slowly drove [drives] … know[ing] no haste” (Dickinson 5), and with whom she stops at a “house that seemed [seems]/ A swelling of the ground” (Dickinson 17-18) or in other words, her grave. To begin the poem, the fact that Death is represented as “if he were a human being” (Evans 15) implies that it is humane. This contributes to the idea that death is not to fear. Later on, it can be concluded that this person has control over her as she describes how she “had put away / My [her] labor, and my [her] leisure too, / for his civility” (Dickinson 6-8), which implies that “everything that had once seemed so important and distracting now recedes in importance” (Evans 17), and how he “slowly drove [drives] … know[ing] no haste” (Dickinson 5), which gives “no clear sense of the underlying purpose of the journey or its ultimate destination” (Evans 16) and thus implies that only Death knows the path and destination of the journey. Both of these examples contribute to the fact that Death completely controls a person against its will and that it is inevitable. Finally when “we [they] paused before a house that seemed / A swelling of the ground” (Dickinson
Death is usually visualized as a frightening character, for example the grim reaper is used in many novels or films. The word ”Death” (line 1) is associated more than someone passing away since Dickinson gave death human characteristics. Its shown when “Death” (1) “Kindly stopped” (2) for the speaker instead of rushing the speaker to enter the afterlife. For the reason that “Death” (1) “Drove slowly…. No haste” (5) meaning that he was patient making it seem like it is a peaceful journey to eternity. Also, as the speaker is with “Death” in the carriage she mentions that he has “Civility” (8) which means that someone is formal polite in behavior toward
In the poem, “Because I could not stop for Death”, Emily Dickinson personifies Death. In the first line, “Because I could not stop for Death”, the author characterizes Death as a proper noun giving death a character form in this poem. Reading lines one and two, “Because I could not stop for Death -He kindly stopped for me¬¬ ”, Emily Dickinson continues to personify death as a male.
Next the fields of grain are personified and described as “gazing” (11), which may symbolize the grain as standing still and watching them as the carriage passed by. Last in the third Stanza, the sunset signifies that the day’s end has come and in broader terms, the end of the speaker’s life. Alliteration is present again in the fourth Stanza, “Dews drew… Gossamer...
Regardless of race, caste, religion, or age, every human has wondered about the one fact of life that unifies us all: What is death? Both poems, “Death of a Young Son by Drowning” by Margaret Atwood and “Because I could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson share a common subject of death. Using figurative language, both poems illustrate distinct takes on a similar topic.
“Because I Could Not Stop for Death” death is approached as a an easy topic to talk about.
Frost?s poem delves deeper into the being and essence of life with his second set of lines. The first line states, ?Her early leaf?s a flower.? After the budding and sprouting, which is the birth of nature, is growth into a flower. This is the moment where noon turns to evening, where childhood turns into maturity, and where spring turns into summer. At this very moment is the ripe and prime age of things. The young flower stands straight up and basks in the sun, the now mature teenager runs playfully in the light, and the day and sunlight peak before descending ever so quickly into dusk. The second line of the second set states, ?But only so an hour,? which makes clear that yet again time is passing by and that a beginning will inevitably have an end.
In this poem there is a lot of figurative language. One of the biggest types of figurative language used in this poem is irony. The irony in this poem is how the mother wouldn't let her child go to march because she feared her child would get hurt. Instead she sent her child to church because she believed it was a safe and sacred place but ironically the church ended up being bombed. Another piece of figurative language that is very effective in this poem is imagery. The way the poem is written helps me create images in my head for example, "She raced through the streets of Birmingham." I can imagine her running around desperately, looking for her child. The metaphors and hyperboles in this poem also help with the imagery, for example, "...night dark hair," and "…rose-petal sweet." These metaphors make me think of the girls smoothly combed black hair and her fresh and beautiful rosy smell. A hyperbole that had a huge effect on the tone was, "But that smile was the last smile to ever come upon her face." This hyperbole really helps me understand the effect of a tragic moment like this and how it can completely ruin
The night symbolized death, and the walk was the person's journey to find their lost life. This poem was somewhat disturbing to me. I thought of a lost soul, thirsting to finish a mission that was not completed in life. Frost depicts death in a frightening manner with the contents of this piece of work.