Subjects:
Emily Dickinson's poems "Because I Could Not Stop for Death",
"I Heard A Fly Buzz-When I Died", and "I Felt A Funeral In
My Brain" all deal with one of life's few certainties, death.
Dickinson's intense curiosity towards mortality was present in
much of her work, and is her legacy as a poet.
"Because I could Not Stop for Death" is one of Emily Dickinson's
most discussed and famous poems due to its ambiguous, and unique
view on the popular subject of death. Death in this poem is told
as a woman's last trip, which is headed toward eternity. This poem
helps to characterize and bring death down to a 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 being that death is natural and unstoppable
for everybody, but at the same time giving comfort that it is
not the end of a soul's journey. The reader can recognize the
poem's theme by analysing its voice, imagery, figures of speech,
form, diction and especially symbolism; all of which help the
reader to understand the poem's meaning. The precise form that
. . .
Sometimes when life doesn't turn out for the best, you need to wait until
your cycle is up.
"I heard a Fly buzz-when I died," points to a disbelief in heaven or any
form of afterlife. In the third stanza
voices start to take over by opening a box. Each stage was a hard endeavour,
with some, followed a period of relief, and others followed with a sense
of desperation, as if things will never get better. Dickinson was not as interested in detail, but rather the
circumference of the idea.
Is there a Heaven or an afterlife? If you kill yourself will you still
go to heaven? Is it your fate when you die? These are just some of the
questions that people have asked themselves, and because Emily Dickinson
is deceased, she now knows all the answers. This is all part of a vicious cycle. This is reflected clearly at the end of the poem.
The speaker lives life, passes away, and is reborn again into this world
all throughout this poem's entirety. " This box is opened and all the problems and troubles
lingering inside are released upon the speaker like "boots of !
lead" weighing the speaker down. Another way in which Dickinson uses the form of the
poem to convey a message to the reader occurs on line four as she writes,
"And Immortality. In line 1, the words "I felt a funeral in!
my brain," sparks thoughts of death. For example, in
line 5, Dickinson begins death's journey with a slow, forward movement,
which can be seen as she writes, "We slowly drove-He knew no haste.
Essay's Topics
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