Emily Dickinson's Because I Could Not Stop For Death

The poem “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” written by the well-known poet Emily Dickinson takes us along the deceased speaker’s memory of their journey to their death. The most abundant literary term throughout the poem is the use of symbolism. Dickinson uses various literary terms to convey the idea to us, that death is something that is inevitable and death’s arrival is for only death himself, as personified in the poem, to know. The speaker’s death was a slow, smooth journey rather than an unpleasant, sudden death, which we know based on how the speaker calmly describes her journey from beyond the grave. Dickinson conveys the idea that the speaker embraced death and was ready to receive their fate. Although she uses other literary terms such as personification, where she personified death as a character, in fact: a male character who is made analogous to a wooer in what emerges as essentially an allegory, with abstractions consistently personified.
This shows that death is kind enough to simply do what she cannot, stopping for her. The character of death exhibits this civility in taking time for the speaker to slowly reach her end. This leads the speaker to give up on tasks and activities that kept her busy. Dickinson uses symbolism with Death’s carriage as well. The carriage represents the speaker’s journey to the end. In the carriage ride the speaker is accompanied not only by Death but also by Immortality. The speaker views Death and Immortality as fellow travelers that accompany them on their journey. The speaker has placed complete trust in their fellow travelers as they perceive them as kind and courteous. In the second stanza, the speaker addresses their journey as being leisurely. The speaker did not mind breaking away from their normal tasks because Death himself treated the speaker with such