Poem Analysis: The Grim Reaper

When we hear about death we imagine something scary, such as The Grim Reaper. In our minds The Grim Reaper is a tall, dark figure who’s wasting no time on bringing you along with him. However in the poem I’m going to talk about in this paper views death in a different perspective. In Emily Dickinson’s poem, Because I Could Not Stop for Death, the speaker describes death as a gentleman, and how he took her on a nonstop journey. Besides death being talked about as a person, the speaker also goes through a journey with death reminiscing her life. She also talks about how she continues this journey to what seems to be the afterlife. Dickinson describes the speaker’s death as an experience that she is looking back on. Death isn’t thought of as
We usually think of death as a kind of scary situation, something that we aren’t able to control. Most of us tend to think of The Grim Reaper when we think about death. The Grim Reaper is someone who isn’t known to be “kindly” as death is personified in Dickinson’s poem, Because I Could Not Stop for Death. In the first two lines of the poem death arrives to pick up the speaker. She says “Because I could not stop for Death- He kindly waited for me,” this shows that Dickinson represents death as a generous person. He’s also described as being patient, when in reality death can’t stop to wait for someone. Another way that Dickinson shows Death’s manners is when the speaker says “We slowly drove- he knew no haste.” By saying this she shows us that he has patience and that death isn’t in a hurry to get to their destination. When she and death are traveling together she says, “For his civility,” saying this she shows that he is polite and that he is respectful. Describing Death’s personality, the speaker also talks about how they went on a journey and how passing along certain things brought back
“…Yet feels shorter than the day,” is another way of saying, “it feels like it was just yesterday.” The speaker was telling us about her memorable day as if it happened not too long ago. Dickinson then ends the poem with the image of the horses’ heads pointing forward, “I first surmised the horses’ heads were towards eternity.” The speaker encounters the horses and watches as their heads are jutting forward towards what seems like eternity. Her journey with death paused when she died but it continued into the afterlife and became a nonstop