Death in Emily Dickinson's Poetry
             Emily Dickinson was largely known for her morbid writings that seemed to mirror her own life. Her best works were written after the death of a close friend or family member. Emily Dickinson's loneliness, deceiving loves, and family members deaths greatly influenced her writings that were a mere attempt to let others know of her problems. The two poems "Because I could not stop for Death" and "I heard a Fly buzz when I Died" reflect the same subject matter but convey two substantially different attitude towards death. The first poem portrays the relation between a person and death sneaking up on them and the latter is about a person's ability to perceive even at the time of death.
             Emily Dickinson was an introspective author who lived her insular life in her family's home in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her immediate family was very important in her life. Her father who held education in high regard was a lawyer, a politician, and the treasurer of Amherst College. Her mother suffered periods of poor health and Emily often felt she was without a mother. In her late twenties, Emily began to withdraw from society. There has been much speculation regarding her agoraphobia.1 Some critics feel she suffered emotional crises due to problematic love affairs with the Reverend Charles Wadsworth but, there seems to be no concrete evidence that this was true.2 The later years of Dickinson's life were tragically marked by the deaths of her closest friends: Emily's father died in 1874, Samuel Bowles in 1878, Holland in 1881, Charles Wadsworth, her love, Dickinson's mother in 1882, and her nephew in 1883.3 Her poetry from that period shows an obsession with death that has come to characterize Dickinson's work as a whole.
             Emily died in 1886 of kidney failure. After her death Lavinia, Emily's sister, found her poem collection and had the poet...