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Perception Of Death By Emily Dickinson

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Death is an unknown entity set at a specific point in our lives. It occurs sporadically and surrounds us everyday, an irreversible act. Some believe the good you do while living affects the life you have after, while those without strong religious ties are left to wonder what happens after death. Are humans born to die? Emily Dickinson, a poet of the 1800s questions the existence beyond living to try to understand an experience that no storyteller can share. Although Dickinson’s is baffled by death her entire life, she anticipates death as something to look forward to and acknowledges that there can be a happy existence after life.

Many of Dickinson’s works address the living perception of death and how we treat those who have passed. Dickinson focuses on how when an individual dies we only mourn and often forget to remember the positive and the existence they have ahead of them. She also acknowledges that we treat our dead as if they never lived and try to contain the essence of a person in a small plot of land: …show more content…

Dickinson manages to make death something to look forward to but also to look scary but also something to wait for. In this stanza, Dickinson shows how impending death is: “It made no Signal, nor demurred,/ But dropped like Adamant.” Without option or fight a person can die willing or not. Dickinson shows a progression of the views on death, some being her desire find out what happens after death, while others glorify her views and some make death fearful. But all these perspectives on death make the act of dying seem unattainable. Death always seems to be out of reach and uncontrollable. It is evident that in Dickinson’s poems, she is fascinated with death and the complications of it. Yet, Dickinson has yet to write a poem of her beliefs that are not religiously affiliated of what happens after death. Her fascination of dying is what makes her emotions around death so

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