Because i could not stop for death&quot Essay Example for Free

Because i could non stop for deathquot actEmily Dickinson frequently explores death through her poetry, using her eponomous em dashes to communicate the disarray created by an intelligent and searching approach to the afterlife in a mind indoctrinated in Puritan dogma. last is initially presented in this poem as a very different character from its usual personification as a malign, scythe wielding spirit. Here, as the poem begins, he takes the form of a charming suitor who kindly stops, and maintains his politeness throughout their excursion.As we progress through the poem, however, the reader becomes increasingly suspicious that the apparently benevolent Death has not, in fact, got Dickinsons best intrests at heart. The fourth stanza marks the change in tone that reveals this the onset of unfortunate chill as the carriage passes into darkness highlights how unprepared Death has left her, providing no warning of what is to come. The sickening tone that the poem adopts in this stanza is created both by the breakdown of the previously iambic rythmn and the language of heatless(prenominal) shivers that the poet uses both of which emphasise the quivering nervousness of the unprepared.Dickinsons physical lack of preparation for the afterlife in the poem, her donning of sheer and tulle for a journey into the night, reflects her lack of spiritual certainty in the real world something reflected in some(prenominal) of her poems. Despite an upbringing filled with much gesture from the pulpit, doubt, not absolute faith, is the subject of much of her work. She body steadfast only in her belief that This piece is not Conclusion, as while she is confident in the existence of something more, the constitution of the afterlife baffles her.This poem is also an exploration of an unusual view of death, as Dickinson inverts the habitual metaphor of Death as the end of a journey into Death as a journeys beginning. Life, in this poem, is extrodinarily transient, c ompressed into the third stanza where childhood, the ripening Grain of middle age and the setting sun of old ages refuse are ploughed through in four lines. The poet makes this already short liftime seem even less substantial by the anaphoric use of We passed, which increases the pace of the poem and gives the passage of time an inevitable feel.Where the poems journey of death concludes is unclear, but we do know that there is a pause, perhaps a terminal pause, at a menage in the ground. Dickinsons use of imagery here is ingenious, as the readers initial confusion mimics the narrators, until we withal surmise that this abode, this swelling in the ground is a grave, thought of only by the deceased as a house. The repetition and ryhme of ground at the end of two lines in this stanza gives it a pounding final examity suggesting perhaps that this, and not the expected Immortality, is to be Dickinsons final resting place.This unexpected turn causes the confusion that the image of the house parallels, and explains the last stanza, in which Dickinsons fear of perpetual existence in a grave has centuries feeling shorter than the daytime / I first surmised the Horses Heads / Were toward Eternity. The poem is, in fact, unclear, but I would suggest that the grave is to be Dickinsons final resting place that the carriage paused not because it intended to go on but instead because the narrator has not yet realised her fate.The final dash of the poem, therefore, represents not continuing doubt as it does in This World is not Conclusion. but serves to remind the reader of the unending nature of Dickinsons internment. In light of this, the first stanzas Immortality may seem out of place, but its rhyme with me perhaps reveals its origins, as the narrator is consequently so potently linked with its presence that we may imagine it is only Dickinson, and not Death, that welcomes immortality to the carriage, and that it is, in fact, only there as a result of her preconcepti ons.Because I could not stop for Death is perhaps, as a result, quite a cynical poem, making no promises of salvation or a Christian heaven. It, in some senses, continues a trend set by This world is not Conlcusion. and Behind me dips Eternity a trend of lessen confidence Dickinsons once absolute faith in a world beyond our own develops into a confused fear at the nature of the afterlife it may be a Maelstrom in the sky, surrounded by Midnight, or perhaps just a house in the ground.All this confusion is the product of Dickinsons upbringing the Tooth that nibbles at the soul is a doubt that was to Puritans damning, and once she admits to herself its existence her future is indefinite and heaven perhaps inachievable. Despite its bleak outlook however, the poem still stands a facinating exploration of the nature of the next world.