Death, a natural part of life, triggers many different emotions and feelings. Each person, when considering death, has a different take on it, based on their life, morals, experiences, and more. Furthermore, people can have more than one take on it because so many different sides of death exist. The death of a loved one can cause extreme sadness and pain but it can also bring immense joy, because of the knowledge that loved one now resides in a better place. However, the happiness of the deceased does not always ease the pain of those still living. Because people experience death in so many different ways, both as the dying and the ones left behind, they have many takes on death as a whole. “Death, Be Not Proud” by Jon Donne, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”, and “I Heard a Fly Buzz – When I Died” by Emily Dickinson all deal with human mortality, yet each comes from a different perspective with different feelings about death.
To begin, the narrator challenges the significance of Death in Jon Donne’s “Death, Be Not
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Death takes from everyone what nothing else could, and for that reason many people live in fear of death, imagining it as perhaps a person of similar character to the Death described in these poems. However, when looking at death, many people only see the side of pain, sorrow, and grief. Emily Dickinson’s poems “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” and “I Heard a Fly Buzz – When I Died” both talk a bit about how death occurs naturally and peacefully. In “Death, Be Not Proud”, Jon Donne looks at Death as if it lacks power because it cannot stop the promise God has for Christians. Death, in fact, is a pit stop before going to live with God for the rest of eternity. Because of God’s promise, every man’s fear has been wiped away, allowing all to truly and wholeheartedly cry out what Paul did in 1 Corinthians 15:55, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your