Nevertheless, we continue to see Dickinson become infatuated with Death. Like any of us who remotely become interested in someone, we start wanting to spend more time with him or her. In this stanza, we see a yearning for this gentleman’s civility, companionship, and respect; she’s yearning for this polite …show more content…
Dickinson’s poem illustrates that death is inevitable. In line 5, for example, she switches from the pronoun “we” to “he,” showing that death is not something collectively agreed upon. She proposes that one make the best out of life, because when Death comes knocking at our front door, then we may as well be ready. Her poem suggests that we should go willingly, and maybe even admire the scenery as we travel to our new “houses.” As the reader, we can tell she’s on board with Death, because she refers to the grave as a house and the tombstone as a roof. Instead of using images of finality to represent the gravesite, she uses the images of one’s comfort zone to describe permanence and tranquility. Analogous to how love shaped Dickinson’s poetry, learning this historical context strengthened my understanding of the literature. Dickinson drew from her experiences to create a poem that all readers could relate to; in doing so, she took negative experiences and turned them into something beautiful, simultaneously using poetry as an outlet for her