Death is so unpredictable, that it comes around before we even expect it. In Emily Dickinson’s poem, “The Last Night that She Lived” the speaker is trying to cope with a woman’s death. The speaker tries to suppress her feelings, but the speaker is filled with sadness and despair. The figurative language and diction provides access into the speaker’s feelings about the woman’s death.
The speaker did not expect a death to occur in her life. For example, in the 1st stanza, the speaker explains that her night was different when a dying woman became involved. The speaker was caught off guard and did not know how to react to the sudden death. It is also evident that the speaker is with a group of people emphasized by the word “Us” in line 3. The speaker describes her shock as well as the others’ feelings. The speaker and the others are starting to anticipate the woman’s death in the second stanza. The speaker was awestruck of this occurrence as it is shown that the speaker was new to this experience. The woman’s death has become the center of the speaker’s life and it is becoming more real to the speaker as the woman is slowly dying.
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In lines 11-16, the speaker is jealous that the others can go on living while the woman has to die alone. “That Others could exist while she must finish quite…” The speaker cannot accept the woman dying so soon and accuses the others of their happiness to live. The speaker becomes silent and so does the others as they are “Too jostled were our souls to speak”. The speaker feels broken and cannot express her words in a manner of truly accepting the woman’s death. The woman’s time finally comes as it is described as “At length the notice came”. The woman’s death is announced and the speaker is forced to confront the reality of the dying now dead woman in her
All her memories of the night before are starting to come back to her. The line “It’s not enough to face your own regrets” (line 7) alludes to things she may have said or done and now wishes she could take it back. She is remembering the words that she spoke. Or could this be the words that someone else said to her? (Though they’re coming back fast, the things you said)” (line 8). The words that were said and the actions that were done start to come back into focus and the speaker is left to wallow in her remorse. She realizes the words and actions are not something that can be taken back. All the speaker can do is clean up the messes that has been made, think about the words that were spoken and how they led to the end of her
In stanza 12, she tells us that he has “bit her pretty red heart in two.” Next, she states that he died when she was ten, and when she was twenty years old, she attempted suicide - “…I tried to die, to get back back back to you.” In stanza 13 is where she starts talking about her husband. She says that instead of dying, her friends “stuck her together with glue,” and since she could not die to get back to her father, she would marry someone who was similar.
Prompt: Write an essay in which you describe the speaker's attitude toward the woman's death. Using specific references from the text, show how the use of language reveals the speaker's attitude.
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
She describes their movement as aimless, and careless because of their lack of motivation to struggle on, seeing life as “ought” or nothing compared to what it once was before the loss. The reader can imagine being in the position of the sufferer; very stagnant, and lifeless almost like a corpse which is what makes this form of diction so evoking.
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.
Roethke's message in the poem "She", is to prove that even though someone you love is gone, they are not really gone; because they stay with you. Roethke explains how "she" is still doing the same things she did as if she was alive. Though, she is dead now, she will live in the garden and the
The title alone suggests to the reader that death is being called upon. The poem invokes in the reader images of more than just death; such as birds singing and children waiting for school with the lines, “Whah the little birds in spring, Ust to come and drink an’ sing”, ( ). What is most interesting, is as sweet as that imagery is, it still leads to the long rest of death. I have heard people say that when your time is coming to an end, you will think upon those moments you enjoyed most; like the solace of the birds singing, or the happiness that only a child could bring. I wondered about those thoughts for a bit after I was done with this
Next, "I Felt a Funeral in My Brain" creates an illusion of a mind becoming unstable by describing the speaker's irrationality. The speaker's irrationality is represented in the third stanza and fourth stanza. It is evident that the speaker is beginning to hear voices, which is why she states "And then I heard them lift a Box" (line 9). The voices that the speaker is hearing are beginning to take over her mind as she expresses "And creak across my Soul," which gives the reader's the illusion of the speaker losing all control. All the problems that the speaker is experiencing as a result of her mental stability are beginning to take their toll, which is evident through the statement "Boots of Lead, again, Then Space - began to toll" (line 11-12). The speaker has now fallen into a state of irrationality, and her mind has suffered enough, and consequently thoughts of suicide plague the speaker. The statement "As all the Heavens were a Bell" represents the speaker's feelings that her mind has a chance of being at peace again if she ends her existing insanity, and she must therefore act upon her suicide thoughts (line 13). The speaker is trying to convince herself to follow through with her thoughts of suicide, as clearly indicated in her statement "Wrecked, solitary, here-." The speaker
In the second stanza of the poem the poet presents the reader with a funeral setting. The mourners are all seated, and a service begins. The poet describes this service as being quite intense ("like a Drum (that) Kept beating—beating"). The intensity of the service causes the poet’s mind to go numb. The numbness represents the death of her mind.
The first line of stanza four “Or rather-- He passed Us—“ (l. 13) demonstrates that the speaker is uncertain about her existence in the world. Now she feels that her life symbolized by the sun is passing by. She becomes chilled by the “dews” (l. 14). Lines three and four in this stanza illustrate the reason for her coldness. The speaker is attired in a light “Gown” (l. 15) and cape or “Tippet” made of “Tulle” (l. 16), which is a kind of thin, transparent, open meterial. When people die,
To begin, the speaker, in a very calm manner, describes a moment in time where she and a man called Death share a carriage together as if they were in a relationship with one another. Not only does the speaker leave with Death without any questions, but also states that she is obligated to leave her household to work for her new husband Death in lines five through nine. Due to the fact that the speaker so carelessly goes along with Death, shows just how strong her connection is with him. She is completely unaware and blinded at the fact that leaving with Death is something that is forever.
The poem by Emily Dickinson entitled the “The Last Night That She Lived” is about the death of a family member. The death was rather expected as it seems. The reason we know this is because the whole family was already gathered in order to be there when she passed. Dickinson was labeled as a dark and morbid writer in her time. In the poem “The Last Night That She Lived,” we get to experience the sadness, grief, and even spirituality of Dickinson’s feelings when dealing with her experiences of death.
Consider the opening line. Do you sense that the narrator is relived or yearning for something she can never have again? Explain why you feel the way you do.