Verses The Poem example essay topic

Emily Dickinson "Because I Could Not Stop For Death" Being one of the most respected poets in American history, Emily Dickinson has inspired writers for nearly two centuries. Because she had a severe sickness that led her to return home from the female seminary that she was studying at, you can see in her writing the loneliness that she reflects into her poetry. Though this loneliness is apparent, there is also left the possibility for happiness somewhere down the road. "Because I could Not Stop for Death" is one of Emily Dickinson's most discussed and famous poems due to its unique view on the popular subject of death. Death in this poem is told as a woman's last trip, a trip where she is going into toward eternity. The way that the poem is written it makes the reader feel the woman's tragedy on a much more personal level.

Different from the more popular views of death being brutal and cruel, Dickinson makes death seem passive and easy. The theme of the poem is that death is a natural stage in our life cycles, but at the same time she gives comfort to the reader that death is not the end of our journeys, but more like another beginning. The form and tone that Dickinson uses throughout the poem helps her reader to understand the message that she is trying to get across in the poem. The way that the poem is written is that each set of verses tells the reader one little story and as you read the poem all the stories come together and feed off of one another to make the poem come alive as a much broader image in the readers mind.

"Because I Could Not Stop for Death" starts to gives the reader a feeling of gradual movement throughout the second and third groups and verses. In line 5, Dickinson seems to contradict her own writing as she writes, "We slowly drove-He knew no haste". This seems to be a two person point of view where to her they were moving slowly, though she says, "He knew no haste", this seems to say that though she feels as though they are moving quite slowly that he is moving very intent and fast towards their ultimate destination. The third group of verses seems to hasten the journey as she gives examples of death, immortality, and youth as death and the woman pass the children playing. Through mentioning the children she seems to convey that this journey that she is on is a birth into a new life and she will be young once again. The flow of the poem becomes faster as the woman gets closer and closer to her final destination, where the tone of the poem becomes more sorrowful, but then in the last four lines she gives the reader a glimpse of hope.

In these verses the poem seems to slow down as Dickinson writes, "Since the-tis-Centuries-and yet / Feels shorter than the day / I were first surmised the Horses' Heads / Were toward eternity". The reader is given a feeling that life has ended and that she is going peacefully through eternity. Death to some people is the ultimate fear, some people cannot wait for death, and some just see it as a passage of time and spirit into another form of existence. In "Because I Could Not Stop For Death" Emily Dickinson shows through the woman she believes that death is just a passage of time into another realm where all is calm and peaceful. She seems to convey to the reader that death is the final passageway for this life, though there may be another life out their for you, and that you are just waiting to be born again.