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ENGL 103A: American Literature 1789-1900 (Archived)
Dept of English, UC Santa Barbara (Summer 2011)
• ABOUT
• ASSIGNMENTS
• SYLLABUS
• DISCUSSION
• CLOSE READINGS
CLOSE READINGS
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26 Comments on “CLOSE READINGS”
1. [pic]John Cooper says:
July 13, 2011 at 3:36 pm
Emily Dickenson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death” details the events the narrator experiences after dying. In the poem, the narrator is driven around in a horse-drawn carriage to several places, including a schoolyard, a field of wheat, and a house sunken in the
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The line also indicates certain doubtfulness; if we truly do exist in the world. The third stanza reveals the answer to the numerous questions offset by the narrator, “All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own” (392). The narrator believes the only way to discover the answer is to find it through oneself; a conventional idea of transcendentalism. Apart from the philosophical debate, the poet redirects himself to the subject of society itself or how one lives life in it. The narrator illustrates the months as vacuums (395). Metaphorically, the vacuum the poet speaks of is the consistent pattern enveloping one’s life. He voices it in a negative tone, almost wishing the readers to break away from the repetitious pattern; the entire life of man is based upon a pattern and so are the months and days, never changing and always ending on January during the month or Saturday during the week. People tend to do the same thing every day – get up from bed, eat breakfast, go to work, eat lunch, get off work, eat dinner, and go to sleep –it never seems to change. Therefore, the narrator believes inconsistency is a key component to live life, to be diverse in how man lives. Conformity becomes an issue for the poet, “conformity goes to the fourth-remov’d,/I wear my hat as I please indoors or out” (396-397). Conformity or following the suit of
In literature, themes shape and characterize an author’s writing making each work unique as different points of view are expressed within a writing’s words and sentences. This is the case, for example, of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” and Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death.” Both poems focus on the same theme of death, but while Poe’s poem reflects that death is an atrocious event because of the suffering and struggle that it provokes, Dickinson’s poem reflects that death is humane and that it should not be feared as it is inevitable. The two poems have both similarities and differences, and the themes and characteristics of each poem can be explained by the author’s influences and lives.
In the poem “Because I could Not stop for Death”, Emily Dickinson describes death as an experience that she is looking back on. Dickinson uses a variety of elements, such as personification, imagery and irony to get her point across that death is not a dreadful event, but actually a pleasant experience. Although death is often perceived as being depressing and frightening, it should be viewed in a positive way realizing that it is the beginning of eternity.
The fourth stanza is the depiction of an open book. This symbolizes revelation of that which is hidden. However, like any book the judgment is based on the perception of the reader. For this reason, this becomes a moment of courage, where the revelation can be accepted by the outside world or rejected if the views are not in concordance.
"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
Emily Dickinson is one of the most important American poets of the 1800s. Dickinson, who was known to be quite the recluse, lived and died in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts, spending the majority of her days alone in her room writing poetry. What few friends she did have would testify that Dickinson was a rather introverted and melancholy person, which shows in a number of her poems where regular themes include death and mortality. One such poem that exemplifies her “dark side” is, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”. In this piece, Dickinson tells the story of a soul’s transition into the afterlife showing that time and death have outright power over our lives and can make what was once significant become meaningless.
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” by Emily Dickinson has written in 1863. Emily Dickinson was born in 1830-86, she is one of the greatest poets in American literature. Dickinson wrote love poems which it indicates strong attachment because of this it 's difficult to know if does poems where subjects of her feelings or just part of her poetic imagination. The different tension that comes from her work is due to the cause of not accepting orthodox religion, “the flood subject”- immortality, and her rebellious (Emily Dickinson). We can see that this poem is one of many that were later discovered because the title and the first line of the poem are the same. Death came to take the speaker into his carriage and drive around in it. By the first passing to a school where children play. Then passing grain field and looking at the sun. The last stop is an old “house” getting eaten by the surrounding vegetation. Lastly, she comes to realize that centuries have passed, but only feeling like days, and moving to eternity (Dickinson). The meaning of “Because I Could not stop for Death” is that journey to death and its feelings. The separation of the stanza, it shows the different steps in how death feels and word choices.
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,
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.”
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
Emily Dickinson is one of the most famous authors in American History, and a good amount of that can be attributed to her uniqueness in writing. In Emily Dickinson's poem 'Because I could not stop for Death,' she characterizes her overarching theme of Death differently than it is usually described through the poetic devices of irony, imagery, symbolism, and word choice.
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.
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)”.
The statement that conformity and tradition are in opposition to individualism and defiance of authority is very true in The Dead Poet Society, and even more so in today’s society in general. One can walk into any high school and see this is true. In a typical high school, people seem to have very much in common, especially in dress, hair style, etc… which is in opposition to individualism in and of itself. People are so caught up in conforming to how society says they should live their lives, it really tarnishes the spirit of individuality human beings are meant to have.
“The relationship between the energies of the inquiring mind that an intelligent reader brings to the poem and the poem’s refusal to yield a single comprehensive interpretation enacts vividly the everlasting intercourse between the human mind, with its instinct to organise and harmonise, and the baffling powers of the universe about it.”