The Last Night That She Lived Diction

“The Last Night That She Lived” Commentary Death has a drastic and harrowing effect on a person. Often, a person’s senses will be enhanced and a deep sense of grief will come about. Emily Dickinson applies structure, diction, and figurative language in the poem “The Last Night That She Lived” to emphasize the effect death can have on another person. Dickinson incorporates structure to portray the narrator’s raw emotions towards the woman’s death. Enjambment displays that the speaker is pausing to reflect upon what has just happened. This shows the reader that the poem is to be taken seriously. Typography across the poem accentuates the complexity of what the speaker and the people amongst her are feeling. The speaker coldy remarks “The last Night that She lived / It was a Common Night / Except the Dying” (1-3) as if the death of the woman was nothing but an afterthought. The random capitalization of words that are not proper highlights the speaker’s bitterness. Polysyndeton is inserted in lines 25-27 to implement a gory image in the reader’s mind of how the woman is buried. Structure plays an

The usage of the archaic word “‘twere” (8) helps illustrate an image of the past. The alliteration in the line “We waited while She passed-” (17) is applied to help keep the somber rhythm of the poem. Alliteration is included again in line 23 to depict an image the of woman dying. “Struggled scarce” (23) simply rolls of the tongue in a blunt way, just like how someone dies. Throughout “The Last Night She Lived”, the word ‘we’ is repetitively exercised throughout the poem, signifying the community’s sadness and sudden shift in perspective. The speaker never once says ‘I’. The figurative language of the poem symbolizes how death never affects just one person and is a tragedy humans have been experiencing