Emily Dickinson's Poem 479

I chose Emily Dickinson’s poem 479 (712) because I remember discussing it briefly in one of my high school English classes and I wanted the chance to analyze it more closely. The poem is about the narrator’s death and subsequent journey to the afterlife. Death is a character in the poem and is written as the narrator’s gentleman suitor; it is almost as if the two are going on a date. In the last stanza, the reader discovers that the narrator has in fact been dead for centuries and is recounting her experience with Death. This poem is particularly interesting because takes what many consider to be a terrifying subject—death—and gives it human characteristics. Death becomes a man whom the narrator describes as kind and civil; instead of preying