Use Of Personification In Emily Dickinson's Poetry
In Emily Dickinson’s poems “A word is dead,” “The heart asks pleasure first,” and “Because I could not stop for Death”, personification is used to understand the meaning.
In “A word is dead,” the poem is about when a word is spoken many believe it loses meaning, but Dickinson says it “begins to live that day.” Dickinson uses personification to describe “a word is dead” and “begins to live.” A word is an expression one uses. A word cannot die nor live, it can only happen through the actions of a person. A word begins to live when a person expresses themselves, the start of a story. When one cannot go into depth to express thoughts and experiences, the word loses its meaning and simply dies.
In “The heart asks pleasure first,” the “heart” can
be associated with love. The poem is about the emotions of a person once in love. It transitions from passion, to a broken heart, to feeling hurt, and a desire to die, terminating the pain. One asks to fall in love or feel cheerful, hoping no misery will come from it. Dickinson talks about the heart as it were a person. The first line, “The heart asks pleasure first, and then, excuse from pain…,” personification is used to describe the feelings of a person. The heart cannot speak, however, it is the individual who does. The need for pleasure, no pain, sleep, “the liberty to die,” these are desires one craves. Emily replaces people with “the heart” proclaiming that we as a human being tend to let our heart choose what we desire.
In “Because I could not stop for Death,” the poem is about the narrator and her journey with “death.” At first, it seems she overcame a near death experience as it is said, “he kindly stopped for me,” but the last line, “I first surmised the horses' heads. Were toward eternity,” reveals the narrator’s mortality. She was not ready to quit living, honestly who is? But death is unexpected. Within the poem, death possesses the qualities of a person. Dickinson wrote, “He kindly stopped for me,” indicating that death has the ability to stop. In reality death is unpredictable and waits for no one. Emily describes death as “he knew no haste.” Death has no time limit as when it will happen. Death is not a person; it does not have the mentality or reason as why it ends a life. It’s a natural cycle that’s out of our control.
The use of personification in “A word is dead,” “The heart asks pleasure first,” and “Because I could not stop for Death,” helps us better understand and expand our intake of the poem in a nonhuman perspective to find the theme.
In “A word is dead,” the poem is about when a word is spoken many believe it loses meaning, but Dickinson says it “begins to live that day.” Dickinson uses personification to describe “a word is dead” and “begins to live.” A word is an expression one uses. A word cannot die nor live, it can only happen through the actions of a person. A word begins to live when a person expresses themselves, the start of a story. When one cannot go into depth to express thoughts and experiences, the word loses its meaning and simply dies.
In “The heart asks pleasure first,” the “heart” can
be associated with love. The poem is about the emotions of a person once in love. It transitions from passion, to a broken heart, to feeling hurt, and a desire to die, terminating the pain. One asks to fall in love or feel cheerful, hoping no misery will come from it. Dickinson talks about the heart as it were a person. The first line, “The heart asks pleasure first, and then, excuse from pain…,” personification is used to describe the feelings of a person. The heart cannot speak, however, it is the individual who does. The need for pleasure, no pain, sleep, “the liberty to die,” these are desires one craves. Emily replaces people with “the heart” proclaiming that we as a human being tend to let our heart choose what we desire.
In “Because I could not stop for Death,” the poem is about the narrator and her journey with “death.” At first, it seems she overcame a near death experience as it is said, “he kindly stopped for me,” but the last line, “I first surmised the horses' heads. Were toward eternity,” reveals the narrator’s mortality. She was not ready to quit living, honestly who is? But death is unexpected. Within the poem, death possesses the qualities of a person. Dickinson wrote, “He kindly stopped for me,” indicating that death has the ability to stop. In reality death is unpredictable and waits for no one. Emily describes death as “he knew no haste.” Death has no time limit as when it will happen. Death is not a person; it does not have the mentality or reason as why it ends a life. It’s a natural cycle that’s out of our control.
The use of personification in “A word is dead,” “The heart asks pleasure first,” and “Because I could not stop for Death,” helps us better understand and expand our intake of the poem in a nonhuman perspective to find the theme.