Robert Frost's Because I Could Not Stop For Death

In literature, readers often see topics that one can relate to; topics that mimic everyday life, personal anecdotes or situations one has experienced . “A Rose for Emily,” a fictional story written by William Faulkner, shares eerily similar details with an article written in the Philadelphia Inquirer on January 30, 1987, “A Woman’s Wintry Death Leads to a Long-dead Friend,” by Dick Pothier and Thomas J. Gibbons JR. Faulkner’s narrator depicts the reclusive life of Miss Emily Grierson and the events leading to the discovery of a dead man’s body that had been locked away in her 2nd story bedroom for over forty years. In the article, Pothier and Gibbons report how a woman named Frances Dawson Hamilton was found to have “lived with the skeletonized remains” of her long-time companion for over two years after being discovered frozen to death in her home (153). Faulkner’s short story heavily relies on the narrator’s knowledge in addition to his point of view and experiences whereas Pothier and Gibbons report facts observed on scene or learned from interviews of neighbors, police, and investigators. Although fear of solitude initially motivated both women to behave so outlandishly, it is the authors’ distinct portrayal that illustrates each individual’s intentions.

Death is a controversial and sensitive subject. When discussing death, several questions come to mind about what happens in our afterlife, such as: where do you go and what do you see? Emily Dickinson is a poet who explores her curiosity of death and the afterlife through her creative writing ability. She displays different views on death by writing two contrasting poems: one of a softer side and another of a more ridged and scary side. When looking at dissimilar observations of death it can be seen how private and special it is; it is also understood that death is inevitable so coping with it can be taken in different ways. Emily Dickinson’s poems “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” and “I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died” show both

Death is an aspect of life that everyone becomes acquainted with sooner or later. The poem, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” by Emily Dickinson, is seen as a reflection of the passing of time in one 's life while living. No one knows when it is their time to die, and we live everyday as if tomorrow it promised. Dickinson is saying that since we as humans tend to live on the expectation for tomorrow, we don 't think about the end of our life or when it will be. That time will stand still when, and only when, life draws to a close, yet it will no longer matter.

"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

Robert Frost was born March 26, 1874 at San Francisco, California and died January 29, 1963 at Boston, Massachusetts. Frost was an educator and poet. He is widely known for his poetry; some of Frost’s famous work includes The Road Not Taken, Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening, Mending Wall, and Out, Out─. Out, Out─ tells a story of a young boy cutting wood to help provide for his family. He then acquires an injury on his hand by the saw. The boy ends up dying due to the severity of his wound. His family returns to their duties. This poem uses many elements to emphasize death. Robert Frost uses the poetic elements of imagery, figures of speech, and symbolism to illustrate the theme of death in the poem Out, Out─.

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,

Because I could not stop for Death is about the speaker and her date with death to visit the tombstone she had been laid to rest in years before. It explores themes of death and mortality as the speaker looks on to her life before death understanding

Because I could not stop for Death by Emily Dickinson processes the life leading up to death and eternal life. The speaker is telling the poem many years after death and in eternal life. She explains the journey to immortality, while also facing the problem of sacrifice and willingness to earn it. The poem is succulent in alliteration, imagery, repetition, personification and rhyme. A notable shift in almost all of the poems direction occurs as well. By doing so, Dickinson, a poet in the American Romantics era, sets forward an idea that immortality will appear in the afterlife of an individual who believes so.

In the poem “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickenson, death takes form as a human that acts as a gentle guide to the speaker of the poem. However the relationship changes in the fourth stanza, a more conventional vision of death takes place and things become cold and corrupt. Dickenson successfully creates this relationship between the speaker and death by using personification, sensory details, and paradox. The meter of the poem creates a kind of light hearted rhyme to it which creates a tone that isn’t as dark as the poems subject matter. Personification is the most important of the rhetorical devices used in the poem, mainly because without it the poem would lose one of its main characters.

I read the poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost and listened to the song “Live Like You Were Dying” by Tim McGraw. They have similar themes that the authors developed using poetic techniques. In Robert Frost’s poem, the theme is to keep working even though obstacles may get in your way. In lines nine and ten, Frost uses personification when he says, “He gives his harness bells a shake to ask if there is some mistake.” The horse is like a friend or parent asking if he should be stopping before all of his tasks are finished. In lines 15 and 16 Frost uses repetition when he says, “And miles to go before I sleep and miles to go before I sleep.” This shows his determination in finishing his promises before he stops to

The theme I chose for the poem “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” was immortality. I chose immortality because I believe the words used in it are a signification for something more complex than mortality. I think the speaker is recalling their day of death, centuries later, from a life after death or in some perspectives, heaven. Some symbolism in the poem that supports the theme is, “Since then – ‘tis Centuries – and yet feels shorter than the Day” meaning the speaker is in some other dimension, some centuries later and they feel like death happened yesterday. Another quote supporting the theme is, “I first surmised the Horses’ Heads were toward Eternity” signifying that angels or passed over creatures are guiding them into their eternal

In “Because I could not stop for Death” the woman seems to anticipate everlasting life, and has found it. The woman in the poem has been taken away by death. It almost seems as if the lady is reminiscing through her life as a child, an adult, and then she finds death. The death portion of her life is represented by “We passed the setting sun” (12). Reading through the poems leads one to believe the woman was very comfortable with death and all it had to offer. The woman in the poem is so comfortable in her new state that time trickles by, feeling “…shorter than the Day” (22). The poem, “Because I could not stop for Death” represents a woman that has found peace with her everlasting life. The mysterious experience of death is revealed in both poems.

Robert Frost's poem “The Road Not Taken” describes a traveler facing a choice, he can either choose the road not taken, or he can choose the road most traveled by. He does not know where either road might lead, but in order to continue with his journey, he can pick only one road. He analyses both roads for the possibilities of where each may take him in his journey. Frost's traveler realizes that regret is inevitable. Regardless of his choice, he knows that he will miss the experiences he might have encountered on the road not taken. Frost, uses literary elements, such as Denotation and Connotation, Symbolism, alliteration, consonance, and assonance in order to convey massage.

“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost and “Death, be not proud” by John Donne are two poems with different meanings but share one of many of the same themes. Although the poems share different meanings as a whole, the reader can conclude the same common theme from both of these poems. Even though the reader may think the poems lack a same common theme, the theme is revealed by the end of both these poems. These two poems share the same theme of hopes and dreams. As the reader explores the same common theme of these two poems, the literary devices of personification, imagery, alliteration, metaphor, and irony can be seen throughout these poems as well.

The great poet Robert Frost was asked if the poem, The Road Not Taken, was about an experience in the poet 's life: He answered that a poem is never about an experience, it is an experience. If you succeed in determining exactly what Dylan meant in “Mr. Tambourine Man,” you will have succeeded in destroying it. This is the song that marks the change where Dylan moves on from the public world of overt political protest songs to a focus on the individual consciousness, which I’d like to argue is another more subtle form of protest. “Mr. Tambourine Man” is rich with expressions of emotion. With a new personal approach to songwriting, Dylan takes feelings that he was perhaps dealing with at the time, absorbs them, and artfully crafts them into mysterious lyrics that are simply enamoring. The song has a bright, expansive melody accompanied by Dylan’s jaunty vocals that is beautifully mesmerizing. The song is about the feeling of being trapped in a miserable existence and the desperate yearning for freedom from an individual’s own personal hell. It is about the universal need to escape one’s troubles, no matter what the means are, as long as it allows you to forget, deal, and hopefully transcend. It has become famous in particular for its surrealistic imagery, influenced by artists as diverse as French poet Arthur Rimbaud and Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini. The lyrics call on the title character to play a song and the narrator will follow. Interpretations of the