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Emily Dickinson Mortality

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Immortality in Mortality As it is understood in Emily Dickinson's poem, "Because I could not stop for Death", death is made out to have the attributes of a human being. In this poem, Dickinson uses personification to convey death's human like characteristics, metaphors to compare her journey to death and her afterlife, and symbolism to make the meanings in the poem more significant and deeper. Death in this poem, is a human character that represents the speakers death.The major theme of Dickinson's poem, "Because I could not stop for Death", is simply death. Throughout the poem, the speaker narrates her uncanny journey and experience with her death. With the calmness this poem presents, Dickinson paints an abnormal picture of what an experience …show more content…

She refers to death as more of a kind gentleman, than a horrific monster; and ungrudgingly goes on a "ride" with him. She states," Because I could not stop for Death/He kindly stopped for me"(1-2). Meaning that the speaker never had the choice of dying, and instead, death, who is perceived as another character, would kindly do the job for her. In the next two lines of the poem, the speaker joins "immortality" in a carriage, while death drives. As it says in the poem," The Carriage held but just Ourselves/And Immortality"(3-4). By saying this, Dickinson uses the carriage as a metaphor for the speaker's transportation to the afterlife. In the second stanza, the speaker willingly, gives up her previous activities to take the ride with death; since he was so courteous. "And I had put away/My labor and my leisure too, /For his Civility"(6-8). This goes on to show that the speaker's perception of death, is that "he" is very "polite" and has "good manners". Further uses of the theme, death, in this poem, to show the speaker's journey towards it, occur when the speaker changes from referring to death as "He", to saying "We". "He kindly stopped for me/ He knew no haste/ We passed the school.../ We paused before a house"(2-17). The speakers change from calling death "He" to "We", hints that she is now dying because the two have joined into, …show more content…

In stanza six of, "Because I could not stop for Death", readers will realize that the speaker was speaking from beyond the grave. "Since then— 'tis Centuries— and yet"(21). The speaker's peace and calmness in this poem could be supported by the fact that she spoke from beyond the grave. Everything said in this poem, was the speaker looking back on her death day. As she describes in the poem, her death was gentle and slow, and that is why she spoke peacefully towards it. "We slowly drove— He knew no haste"(5). This, meaning her death was calm and took its time. The speaker didn’t think of her death as an end, but as more of a whole new life; afterlife that is. "Feels shorter than the Day/ I first surmised the Horses' Heads/ Were toward Eternity—"(22-24). Toward eternity, means the speakers "death chariot", or carriage, world ride on into her afterlife. Living forever, through death; immortality in

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The speaker is already dead but we don 't know this till the last stanza throughout the poem the speaker is a ghost or spirit. " Because I could not stop for death", death has kindly stopped for her to do what she could not stop for. The day of her death was a very memorable day for this person

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In turn, this makes it seem as though each of the nouns have their own personalities and are all guiding the persona to death, making death itself seem soothing, compassionate, and comforting. Dickinson implies that death should be welcomed and accepted, instead of being feared or dreaded. The journey to death itself is also relieving rather than

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Here, Death has become a gentleman, kind and courteous, taking the poet on a carriage ride through the country side. And yet, both are “Death.” Another thing both these poems have in common is the tone. Neither poem is fearful or hopeless, although Dickinson and Donne seem to have different views again. Emily Dickinson accepts death’s offer for a carriage ride, and has eerie allusions to the customs of courting or getting married in those days, although still, the tone is fearless.

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Furthermore, the speaker’s death did not occur in a splendid fashion; one moment the speaker was alive, and then the next “the Windows failed” (15). The window of life had closed all of a sudden for the speaker, leaving her with a death in darkness. Dickinson’s inclusion of the sudden yet expected ending, which fails to include the speaker exiting on a chariot up to heaven, ironically demonstrates the harsh reality of death. The speaker only experiences unnerving darkness after death rather than the expected light and bright heaven. The speaker’s and the mourner’s expectations of death were ironically shattered with her simple

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The poem begins by expressing how she was not able to stop for death, but how death kindly stopped her. The author uses a soothing form of death, describing it to be in a Carriage. They move along in the Carriage, peacefully, they pass by a school where the children are playing, they passed by fields of grain, and they continue until seeing the sun setting down. The speaker continues by stating how unproperly dress she was, the temperature began to drop, and she was starting to feel cool. They passed by a place where it seemed like that was the place where she would be buried, “The roof was scarcely visible-

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The narrator is consequently a spirit recalling the date of death and is not scared about its manifestation. The narrator still remembers the incidents of the death, how she got chilly and the feeling she got when she looked at those horse heads. This poem is among the many poems written by Emily Dickinson but never published and since they had not titles, they were published by the first name of the poem. The carriage is a metaphor which illustrates the final passage to death and shows more symbolism by holding immortality which is personification in both cases of death and immortality.

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It is talking about how she does not mind that Death has interrupted her tasks because of how polite Death was. She says, “We slowly drove – He knew no haste” (5). This symbolizes the speaker’s death as being long and slow, not quick. This could mean that she was suffering from a “long illness, or slowly dying of old age” (Bouson 110). The poem does not say for sure, but the reader can make educated guesses with what evidence is provided.

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“ Because I could not stop for Death” is a poem filled with rich language, symbolism and has deep meaning. Dickinson uses diverse

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Throughout the poem, death is personified through the use of capitalization as seen in the quotation “He Kindly Stopped for Me”, implying that the narrator has accepted the idea of death; the adverb describing death as “kindly” indicates how caring and courteous he is. Death leads the narrator into an afterlife through a gradual progression of events rather than an abrupt end, as seen in Heaney’s ‘Mid Term Break’. The end of the poem sees the narrator obtaining immortality and living in “Eternity”. Dickinson hints at the idea of immortality at the beginning of the poem where she describes that there are three people present in the carriage: the narrator, death and immortality: “The carriage held but just Ourselves - And Immortality”.

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Death is inevitable while life is inescapable. Death swoops in life a thief in the night and rips you away from reality and drags you away into the depth of the afterlife. Death seeks no one permission because death is omnipotent as the afterlife is everlasting. As Emily Dickson uses the theme to emphasizes the fact that when you die your life seem to be meaningless, your existence seems to fade away as time goes by but in the afterlife time at the same time “Feels shorter than the Day”. Through Emily Dickinson “I died for beauty” and “I could not stop for death” both give the reader a sense of what happen after death and life during the afterlife.

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In the poem, the author introduces the concept that death cannot be avoided, and with the personification of Death, the outlook that it should not be avoided or feared. The poem mainly focuses on the afterlife and the inevitability of Death. The narrator of the poem first speaks about the inevitability of Death in the first two lines: “Because I could not stop for death/ He kindly stopped for me,” (1-2). Line three indicates a hint of intimacy with the statement, “The Carriage held but just Ourselves,” (3).

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She became sick a lot and it could have tied into her stories about death. Emily Dickinson became one of the most famous poets from the 19th century because of her unique writing styles and her great poems. “Because I could not stop for Death” was an interesting poem. It talks about death and the adventure she takes to reach eternity. Throughout the journey through the carriage, the

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The carriage the duo are riding in come to a stop in front of a house where the roof was scarcely visible, something a reader can assume to be a resting place such as heaven. The persona then goes on to say that the time he or she had had felt “shorter than (a) day” and that the “...horses’ heads...were toward eternity” (Dickinson 1). In other words, the persona has become aware of the shortness of life and how he or she was headed towards death regardless which path he or she taken in life. This can then be applied to all other humans and help to aid in the understanding that the one thing a person can be sure of in life is death. Human experiences, on the hand, is often based on spontaneous chance and doesn’t have the same grounding in reality as death does.

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