Abstract The aim of this article is to analyze Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death” stylistically. This analysis is made on different stylistic levels; graphological level, phonological level, morphological level and lexico-syntactic level. All these aspects are helpful to understand the literal and hidden meanings that were used by the poetess to explain her viewpoints regarding the natural phenomenon of death in a very polite manner.
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.”
Written word is perhaps the most powerful medium that humans have created to express their thoughts. A person can express a myriad of emotions through pen and paper, ranging from hope and happiness to morbid obsessions and anxiety. Written words, unlike spoken words, are for eternity. Once a thought is written down, anyone can read it, interpret it, ponder it, or question it, until it is destroyed. On the other hand, if a thought is spoken, it exists only for a second and then exists only in the minds of the one who uttered it and those who heard it. Only those who were present can interpret, question, or ponder that thought. If the paper or whatever material a thought
In the poems “Because I Could Not Stop For Death” and “If I Should Die”, Emily Dickinson uses appealing imagery to reveal that life continues on after one’s death. To begin, in the poem “Because I Could Not Stop For Death”, the narrator “[passes] the School, where children strove at recess ” on the way to her grave(Dickinson 9/10). The imagery of the children playing shows that they are still carrying on with their lives, even after her death. Also in the poem “If I Should Die”, the narrator tells her friend that even after she dies “time will gurgle on, and the morn should beam” (Dickinson 3/4). The pleasing sight of the constant morning sunrise shows the reader that the days will still pass as usual.
Modernism for Emily Dickinson has to do with the uncertainty. Emily Dickinson was a somber thinker who doesn’t try to enlighten anyone of anything. Her poems were uniquely written and she wrote about the uncertainty, which makes her poetry easy to empathize with in the 21st century. The 21st century, is a period of science which is used as a tool to make sense of the uncertainty. Emily Dickinson uses her poetry as a means to question and observe the trauma of human existence. For instance, she doesn’t shy away from the reality of death in her poem “Because I could not stop for Death”. Emily Dickinson being obsessed with the concept of death influenced her to question the effect that death creates by painting death as a traveling companion in her poem. Dickinson as a modern writer challenges traditional beliefs such as gender norms and society in her poem “I gave myself to him”. She questions the value of marriage which is treated as a business transition. She also went against traditional writing as demonstrated by her use of punctuation. Emily Dickinson doesn’t purposely strive towards an end or aim to convince the audience of something, which makes her poetry work as riddles so that the reader questions and analyzes her poetry. Through analyzing Emily Dickinson’s poetry, she demonstrates that she is a modern poet by questioning and observing the values of the nineteenth century. Emily Dickinson enables the reader to come up with many interpretations of her poems because
When thinking of both marriage and death, the word “eternity” comes to mind. Marriage is looked at as a symbol of eternal love, and death is looked at as a state of eternal rest. Also, Christians consider life after death as an eternal state. In “Because I could not stop for Death—,” Emily Dickinson portrays death by describing an eternal marriage.
The subject of death, including her own was a very prevalent theme in Emily Dickinson’s poems and letters. Some may find her preoccupation with death morbid, but this was not unusual for her time period. The mindset during Ms. Dickinson’s time was that of being prepared to die, in the 19th century people died of illness and accidents at an alarming rate, not to mention the Civil War had a high number of casualties, she also lived 15 years of her youth next to a cemetery. Dickinson’s view on death was never one of something to be feared she almost romanized death, in her poem “Because I Could not Stop for Death”, she actually personifies death while narrating from beyond the grave. In the first stanza she states “I could not stop for
she gives have hidden meanings within themselves. There are many more morbid and eerie examples Dickinson used throughout her poem.
At some point, if lucky enough, we all will read something that rings true in such a way that it sticks with us and makes us question and reconnect to our own life. For me it was in Emily Dickinson’s poem, “Because I could not stop for Death.” This specific poem is an excellent example of why her stature as a writer quickly ascended from her first publication. Emily Dickinson lived a life of simplicity and seclusion, yet had experienced so much loss in her life that it became hard to handle. Her poetry is what remained after because of her writing style, her far reaching ideas, and her ability to move and provoke an audience with her words.
Emily Dickinson's Feelings About Death Revealed in Her Poem, Because I could not stop for Death
Writing nearly 1800 poems, Emily Dickinson is known as one of the most distinguished poets of the 19th century. She was born on December 10th in the year of 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts to a very well-known and influential family. Naturally, Emily had the reputation of being a recluse since she was the second born of three children, making her the middle child. Having never been married, she died in the house where she was born on May 15th, 1886. Seemingly her most understood ballad, "Because I Could not Stop for Death" clarifies the desires that Emily Dickinson put on her freedom from common traditions and her strong sense of understanding life as a whole.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1836) is one of the greatest poets in American literature. Although she spent most of her life working in relative anonymity, her status rose sharply following her death and the subsequent publishing of much of her surviving work. Two of Dickinson’s most well-known poems are “Because I could not stop for Death—" and “I heard a Fly buzz - when I died”. I say known as because Dickinson never actually gave her poems proper titles. For this reason, the first lines of her poems have come to be used as a distinguishing reference. This paper will briefly analyze both poems in an attempt to both compare and measure their relative literary merits.
Writer’s convey their opinions through many different techniques. Within Emily Dickinson’s poems, she implements the use of “random” capitalization, dashes, rhythm, and consistent formation. By using these techniques, Dickinson conveys the importance of clarity and being understood.
Firstly, the plot of Dickinson’s poem is persuades and takes the reader imagery through different settings and times. In her first poem, “Because I could Not Stop For Death” Emily talks about death and how she experienced it on her own. The second poem was also written about the author’s death and its title “I heard a fly buzz— when I died” leaves a gray area for discussion. The third poem “I felt Funeral In my Brain” Emily Dickinson describing what it would be like to experience her own funeral in consciousness, while her body was dead. Each stanzas of these poems takes reader to a new part of the poet’s journey with death. In the title of three poems, Dickinson states her subject capturing the reader on an adventure of death. The first poem uses the elements of nature represent a cycle of life. The weather is used to represent various life stages in the poem “Because I could not stop for Death”. This poem describes the process of dying right up to and past the moment of death. The speaker, walking along the road of life is picked up and given a carriage ride out of town to her destination, the graveyard and death. In the first poem the death takes the shape of a gentleman, a grim reaper, his paying a visit is normally never welcome by the normal human who finds him at the door. In the poem the woman welcomes him and is going on a date with death. She embraces death and wished to marry him. The speaker and Death pass by the school, the fields of grain and the setting sun,
The romantic period in literature is a time where imagination and emotion took dominance over all other things in writing. Instead of including strictly reason and fact, they romanticized it, made it more flowy, artistic, and imaginative. We ready many works from popular poet Emily Dickinson, including her piece “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” she romanticized death. She depicted death as just an everyday gentleman suitor and made death seem calm as she accepted it. She described herself going into death as a carriage ride into Eternity. She represented death as a calm and serene act when it is commonly depicted as a more fearful and scary act.
Dickinson, E. (n.d.). Because I could not stop for death. Retrieved from Poetry Foundation on March 8, 2016 from http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177119