Emily Dickinson's Because I Could Not Stop For Death

Born on December 10, 1930, in Amherst, Massachusetts, Emily Dickinson is a reclusive poet whose poetry was found by her sister Lavinia Dickinson according to Biography.com. Dickinson began writing poetry as a teenager some of her best works include “Because I could not stop for death” and “If you were coming in the fall.” In 1886 Dickinson died at the age of 55 due to kidney disease. Additionally, Dickinson’s life impacts major themes in her poetry including death, love, and separation. “Because I could Not Stop Death” was written in 1863, it is one of Dickinson’s most famous works and is also “considered to be one of the greatest masterpieces of American poetry” as reported by encyclopedi dot com. To begin the greatly written poem Dickinson
Dickinson also capitalizes death in the first line, because she seldom capitalizes nouns in her pomes the capitalization of the word death stands out. She capitalizes death because she wanted to personify death meaning to give the character human characteristic and have the character behave as something that is nonhuman. Death in this poem is a man who drives a “horse-drawn carriage.” The final line in stanza one ends with a dash. This is something Dickinson does often in her work. The dash launches readers into the next line of the poem. Furthermore, the dash is also a symbol that ends one line and pulls readers into the next line and keeps readers attention. In line two Dickinson establish the tone of her poem to readers. She seems to be calm and accepting to death. In line two Dickinson says “we slowly drove he knew no haste.” As noted by Dictinay.Com haste means “excessive speed or urgency of movement or action.” Dickinson’s tone sounds extremely calm she is not rushing the gentleman named death. It also seems as if she wants him to take his time readers can assume she is not ready for death. Another breakage occurs in lines three through
In addition, Dickinson is also capitalizing nouns again as she did in the first line. She capitalizes “Carriage,” “Ourselves”, and “Immorality.” She does this to add more emphasis on these words. Over all, “Because I could Not Stop for Death” is a poem of suspense, and death. This poem relates to Dickinson’s life because the she is trying to go in depth and communicate from beyond the grave while describing her journey with Death, from life to afterlife. Readers can get an understanding of how Dickinson feels about death and what she thinks about dying. “Because I could not stop for death” is related to Dickinson’s life because Dickinson personally did not want to die, she appears to be too busy to stop for death so death stopped for her although in this poem she was not ready to die. In contrast, “If you were coming in the fall” is opposite of this poem. “If you were coming in the fall” is a poem of love and