Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson Albert Camus once said, “A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.” Camus means that a work of art is what an artist uses to confess what is deeply in his or her art. Artists use their talents to express the emotion they are feeling or expressed the emotion they’ve felt before. Artists even use their life experiences as inspiration to their art. They want to bring a certain message into their art so other people can understand the true emotion behind the art. Artists use experiences from their lives as inspiration to portray theirs emotions in their works. In Emily Dickinson’s poem, Because I could not stop for death, is an example of how Dickinson uses her life as an inspiration to write about death. Dickinson wrote,” We slowly drove, he knew no hast, and I had put a way my labor, and my leisure too, for his civility.” (Dickinson, “Prentice Hall Literature” 426) Dickinson conveys that death is represented as a good gentleman that is patient to wait for her to die. He doesn’t rush to take her life and she isn’t afraid of death of him because it seems that she is very familiar with death and how accepting she is to him. With her acceptance towards death, she is willing to put aside all her worries, cares, and works for death because she wants death to know that she respects him. Death is one of Emily Dickinson’s experiences she faced in her life. When she was younger many people in her life passed away. Many of her loved ones like her father, her mother and even her nephew died before she did. The one person whose death that influenced her the most was her nephew Thomas Gilbert Dickinson. Her sister even said that she had a nervous breakdown after the death. She experienced several blackouts and she stayed in the confines of her bedroom for seven months which proceeded to her death. Gilbert’s death was the most influential death because she truly loved him and felt she couldn’t go on. She even lived by a cemetery for