Analysis Of Because I Could Not Stop For Death By Emily Dickinson

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A Date with Death In the poem “Because I could not stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson, the poet portrays death as her lover in a way that may creep the average person out, but this idea is misunderstood by many. Dickinson was a person that one may call a freak or a weird human being because she did not leave her house and wrote poems about death. However, her poems showed how she felt at the time she wrote them and has true meaning. In her poem, Emily employs the use of dashes almost every other line, but why does she do this? The answer is quite simple. Each and every line is meant to be looked at and thought about. Dickinson does not want the reader to just run through her poem and read it like the average sentence. This would cause a loss…show more content…
How could death be so kind? It sounds like a terrible thing to even think about. In the first couple of lines, Dickinson is referring to death as a gentleman. The reason for this is because she is going to enjoy every second of it. Death to those who don’t want to die is very cruel, but death to those who do not care to die is a completely different story. A person who does not care to die, like Dickinson, is going to picture death as a kind thing because death is doing them a favor. A real life example that compares to something kind is when a younger person holds the door open for an elderly person. If the younger person lets the door slam on them, the elder person is going to think they are either cruel or rude. However, when the younger person holds the door open for the elderly they could think of it as a favor or an act of kindness. To relate this example to Dickinson, death is holding the door, or portal, open for her to take away her suffering. This is why death is depicted as kind in the second line. As we continue to lines three and four, we see that a carriage is holding Dickinson and death. The pause, or dash, indicates that there are actually more than two in the carriage because immortality is also with them. Dickinson means mortality since we are talking about death here, right? The answer is no. To her death is not the end. It is the start…show more content…
She has put away all of her work for death’s kindness. Another real world example of this is a date. This is not a typical date of today’s world, however. In the Andy Griffith show, Andy and Barney took some girls out on a scenic drive to the duck pond. They got in no hurry as they took off their shoes and waded in the water while skipping rocks. Back in the 60s, this was considered a date. The same goes for when the poem was written, which was 1863. We do not know for sure where death and Dickinson are going, but the choice of words in this stanza tells the readers that she is definitely enjoying his time. It is almost as if she is starting to fall in love with death. Continuing on to the third stanza, death and Dickinson begin passing by children, fields, and the setting sun. Dying is definitely not another normal day to most people, but to Dickinson it is. The lines that lead up to the setting sun signify that she is just living her day as normal even though she is accompanied by death. However, the setting sun does not represent the end of the day. It represents the end of her time. As death and Dickinson go through the day as normal, they are drawing closer and closer to her death. Dickinson is enjoying her time coming to an end because she has now fallen in love with death on this scenic drive. The fourth stanza talks about a gown and tulle which is a silky but thin dress-like gown.
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