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Emily Dickinson Personification

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Death is a natural part of life. Emily Dickinson highlights this fact in her poem, “Apparently With No Surprise”, through the use of personification. In this poem, Dickinson personifies the flower, the frost, and the sun to display the poem’s main theme of death. The flower is described as being happy, the frost as an assassin, and the sun as unmoved. Through this use of personification, Dickinson works to show how death is natural, and how it is not a cruel force, no matter how much it may seem so to those who live.

One example of personification in this poem is when Dickinson writes, “Apparently with no surprise/ To any happy Flower” (Dickinson, ll. 1-2). In this instance, the object being personified is a flower. Dickinson applies the …show more content…

Emily Dickinson highlights this fact in her poem, “Apparently With No Surprise”, through the use of personification. The flower is personified by being described as happy, showing that no matter how innocent an object may be, it is not exempt from the cycle of death. It also shows how death does not pick and choose its victims based on character or deeds, merely by random chance and circumstance. The frost is personified through the action of playing and accidently beheading the flower, and also when it is described as being an assassin. This shows that, while death may seem cruel and harsh, the natural force itself is not malevolent—it is simply playing its part in the cycle of life and death. The sun is personified by being described as unmoved despite the atrocities committed below, further perpetuating the idea that death is not malevolent because it cannot feel. The sun is also seen melting the frost, supporting the idea of death as a natural part of life. The personification of sun also shows how everything has a part to play in continuing the cycle of death. Through her use of personification, Dickinson works to show how death is not cruel, no matter how much it may seem so to those living. Death is simply a natural part of life. In fact, it is the only part of life that is a guarantee. After all, living is a privilege. Death is a

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Thanatopsis by William Cullen Bryant is a Fireside poem about death. The central message throughout this poem is that death is an inevitable part of life that we should not fear, but embrace. The use of personification throughout the poem helps develop the central idea. Personification is the giving of human-like qualities to a non-human subject. In lines 1-3 Bryant uses personification “To him who in the love of Nature holds/Communion with her visible forms, she speaks/

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Whitman and Dickinson share the theme of death in their work, while Whitman decides to speak of death in a more realistic point of view, Dickinson speaks of the theme in a more conceptual one. In Whitman’s poems, he likes to have a more empathic view of individuals and their ways of living. For example, in Whitman’s “Song of Myself”, the poet talks about not just of himself, but all human beings, and of how mankind works into the world and the life of it. Even though the poem mostly talks about life and the happiness of it, Whitman describes also that life itself has its ending, and that is the theme of death. For Dickinson, she is the complete opposite of happiness.

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Death is an unknown, no one has ever died and come back to tell the tale, instead people have to imagine and come up with what they think it will be like. The poets, Emily Dickinson and William Cullen Bryant, both had very different perspectives when it came to writing about death. In Bryant’s “Thanatopsis”, the speaker emphasizes that one joins nature and should not be afraid because they will be with everyone else as equals when they die. This is different from Dickinson’s poem, “Because I could not stop for Death”, where the speaker takes a ride in a carriage with death for eternity. Whether or not these authors believed that their poems were actual representations of what happens when one dies, the poems both describe unique ideas of what

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Another literary device that Dickinson uses in this poem is satire. Satire, in literature, is the making fun of a human character flaw or some type of human weakness. She uses satire to point out the flaws in society such as their need to talk and go on about the smallest and most unimportant details even if they know that the person which they are talking to does not really care. She states that it must be boring to be one of the “somebody’s”, with all the noise and attention that they receive directing what they do. She seems to be making fun of the” somebody’s” for trying to fit into a society that only cares about their own individual images.

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When Dickinson was young she thought of death as a kind, peaceful gentleman. She elaborates on this idea in her poem “Because I could not Stop for Death”, “Because I could not stop for Death/ He kindly stopped for me/ We slowly drove - He knew no haste,” Emily Dickinson uses the personification of Death in a way that bears resemblance to a classy, peaceful gentleman who is willing to slowly guide and patiently wait for a lady. Her wording also gives the connotation that she is young and in love with this gentle Death. This idea abruptly turns into hatred when she loses her parents.

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The speaker seems completely at ease with the Death as they move along at a relaxed pace. In the third stanza, the reader sees reminders of the world that the speaker is passing through, with children playing, fields of grain, and the sun setting. However, the speakers place in the world shifts between the third stanza and the next. Dickinson states, “We passed the Setting Sun- (12)”, but at the beginning of the fourth stanza, the speaker corrects this by stating, “Or rather – / He passed us – (13) ” because she has died. In the rest of the

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Personification is a signature device used in the poem, and this can be seen from the capitalized ‘Death’ and the capitalized ‘Immortality’. Death is personified as a civil suitor in the poem, and the poet’s vision on death and her diction with the title are comprehensible since death is inevitable, and will always be waiting for the victim. Symbolism is also used in the poem. We passed the school, where children stove at recess - in the ring – we passed the fields of gazing grain – we passed the setting sun.’ This stanza neatly symbolizes the three main stages of life: childhood, adulthood, and age.

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Emily Dickinson lived during a time when many would become very well acquainted with death. As such it would become a specter that was feared as it could make an appearance at any time. So looking at Dickinson 's work it seems rather interesting that taken as a collection there seems to be the tale of one character that comes to view death in a multitude of different ways throughout their life. First is the feared figure that leaves them restless, then death comes as something numbing but leaves the living to celebrate the life of the one that has passed, life as a story that is completed and finished upon death, and finally coming to see death as kind figure that takes one to a new home. this finally view is what paints death as something that is not to be feared but rather as something natural, it is the next

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