Analysis "Because I could not stop for death" by Emily Dickenson
„Because I Could Not Stop for Death“ is a poem by Emily Dickinson which was written in 1863. This poem is on the theme of death and contains six stanzas, each with four verses.
The imagery of death can be found within the whole poem, since death is personified (“he kindly stopped for me l. 3) and goes on a kind of journey with the speaker. In the first stanza the persona says that she cannot stop for death, whereas the death can stop for her. So the death decides the time where her time is up. The second stanza contains the words “slowly” and “no haste” (l.5) to explain that death is not under any time pressure in this poem, but has enough time to fulfill its job. In this poem death is taking its time and passes the different stages of the life of the speaker and therefore uses anaphoras in line nine, eleven and twelve.
They first pass the school (l.9), which stands for the childhood, after that they pass the field, which symbolizes the growth ,so in this case maybe the youth of the speaker and to round it up they pass the setting sun which can be interpreted as the end of the life. It seems as the death is giving her enough time, since he knows no haste (l.5), to prepare her for death by showing her the natural stages of life.
In the fourth stanza there is a kind of change, due to the fact that the speaker corrects herself by saying “he passed us” (l.13) to emphasize that she is not active but rather passive in this situation. Also it is described that she wears a wedding dress (l.15) which normally is unusual to wear at the end of your life, since the marriage can be described as a new chapter of life. By wearing a bridal dress to her own death one could think that she is not afraid of death and accepts that her time had come. The fifth stanza describes them passing the house of the speaker, which she seems to hardly remember. Furthermore she says that a century “feels shorter that the day” (l.22) which is a huge paradox owing to the fact that a century
The imagery of death can be found within the whole poem, since death is personified (“he kindly stopped for me l. 3) and goes on a kind of journey with the speaker. In the first stanza the persona says that she cannot stop for death, whereas the death can stop for her. So the death decides the time where her time is up. The second stanza contains the words “slowly” and “no haste” (l.5) to explain that death is not under any time pressure in this poem, but has enough time to fulfill its job. In this poem death is taking its time and passes the different stages of the life of the speaker and therefore uses anaphoras in line nine, eleven and twelve.
They first pass the school (l.9), which stands for the childhood, after that they pass the field, which symbolizes the growth ,so in this case maybe the youth of the speaker and to round it up they pass the setting sun which can be interpreted as the end of the life. It seems as the death is giving her enough time, since he knows no haste (l.5), to prepare her for death by showing her the natural stages of life.
In the fourth stanza there is a kind of change, due to the fact that the speaker corrects herself by saying “he passed us” (l.13) to emphasize that she is not active but rather passive in this situation. Also it is described that she wears a wedding dress (l.15) which normally is unusual to wear at the end of your life, since the marriage can be described as a new chapter of life. By wearing a bridal dress to her own death one could think that she is not afraid of death and accepts that her time had come. The fifth stanza describes them passing the house of the speaker, which she seems to hardly remember. Furthermore she says that a century “feels shorter that the day” (l.22) which is a huge paradox owing to the fact that a century