Personification Of Death

By looking at the poem’s title “Because I could not stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson, most people would assume that the poem would take on a gloomy mood because of the word death, but in this case the poem has a gentle and peaceful mood to it. Dickinson uses the personification of death to cast the peaceful and gentle mood for the poem. Personification and mood both play big parts in revealing the theme that death does not wait for anyone, and often comes unexpectedly. In the poem, Dickinson personifies death, and makes death a character in the poem. The very first way Dickinson personifies death is by capitalizing “Death” in line one, by capitalizing death this shows that throughout the poem death will serve as a character and be more than just a word. Death’s character is revealed through many phrases throughout the poem, the first phrase being that “he kindly stopped” for the main character, which reveals that Death is a kind man and not in a big rush to take the main character to her death (line 2). The reader also learns that Death is mostly in charge when the main character says “We slowly drove- He knew no haste” (Line 5).The line reveals that though “We” as in the main character and Death may be driving together, when
The character traits she gives Death reveals the fact that Death stops for no one, no matter how kind and civil death may be, he is always in charge in the end. The personification is what sets the mood for this poem, if death would not have been personified as a kind and polite man the mood would have taken a whole different path. By making Death kind and polite, the audience feels peacefulness and gentleness, with only a hint of irony. The ironic mood sets in because of how Death is portrayed because usually death is portrayed as a gloomy aspect of life, but in this poem we see death as a peaceful event that we ultimately have no control