Emily Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” my assignment essay help london Organic chemistry

Through Dickinson’s effective use of symbols, metaphors, and vivid imagery, she creates a poem that takes the reader on a journey with death and immortality. The journey begins in the first stanza with the speaker being too busy to stop for death, so death stops for her. Death is personified as a kind suitor when the speaker says, “He kindly stopped for me-” (Dickinson line 2). Death picks her up in a carriage as if they were going on a date. The carriage in which death and the speaker ride is a metaphor for the way in which we make our final earthly passage from death to the afterlife.

The carriage becomes the symbol for the mode of transportation to eternity. While riding with death, the speaker becomes aware that there is another presence in the carriage; “The Carriage held but just Ourselves- / And Immortality” (3- 4). This is the first hint we get that the speaker doesn’t think of death as the end, but as a step on the way to eternal life or an afterlife of some sort. In the second stanza we see that the journey is not rushed, but is proceeding at a leisurely pace “We slowly drove-He knew no haste” (5). The speaker seems to be enjoying the ride and is not fearful of death.

So much so that she has given up the worries and joys of life in exchange for his kindness; “And I had put away / My labor and my leisure too, / For His Civility” (6, 7, 8). Death in fact, seems to be a friendly companion in her journey. In the third stanza, the journey resembles a life passing before your eyes moment that some claim you have at your death. It starts with a view of children playing; “We passed the School, where Children strove / At Recess- in the Ring-” (9- 10). The children at play represent the innocence of her childhood.

She then sees fields of grain that represent her growing into adolescence and then adulthood; “We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain-” (11). The next line represents old age and the end of her life; “We passed the Setting Sun-” (12). Dickinson uses this whole stanza collectively to symbolize the passage of time and the journey of the speaker’s life as she passes from death to eternity. The journey changes in the fourth stanza as the tone is no longer one of leisure and melancholy; instead it gives us a feeling that death is claiming the speaker.

When the sun sets and darkness surrounds the earth, a cold chill almost always accompanies it. This makes the speaker wonder if the sun had actually passed her; “Or rather-He passed Us-” (13). The speaker soon begins to feel cold; “The Dews drew quivering and chill-” (14). It is then that she notices how inappropriately she is dressed; “For only Gossamer, my Gown- / My Tippet-only Tulle” (15- 16). She now begins to realize that the coldness and chill are not external, but internal.

It becomes clear to the reader that the coldness and the chill is death’s cold grip taking over her body. Somehow, the cold, dark, and eerie chill of the night seems unimportant to the speaker as her journey in the carriage comes to an end at the cemetery. In the fifth stanza, death, the driver of the carriage pauses “(…) before a House that seemed / A Swelling of the Ground-”(17- 18). The speaker is just starting to understand that this house is her grave. Dickinson uses house as a metaphor for her grave to make the speaker feel comfortable as she views her final resting-place.

Although her gravestone is barely visible, she somehow recognizes it as her underground home; “The Roof was scarcely visible- / The Cornice-in the Ground-” (19- 20). Death only pauses at this house, because although it is her home, it is really only a resting place as she travels to eternity. In the final stanza we realize that the speaker has already reached eternity when she says, “Since then-‘tis Centuries-and yet / Feels shorter than the Day,” (21- 22) meaning that although it has been centuries since she has died, it feels no longer than a day.

It is not just any day that she compares it to however; it is the very day of her death when she “(…) first surmised the Horses’ Heads / Were toward Eternity” (23- 24). Through her poem “Because I could not stop for Death,” Emily Dickinson succeeds in helping the reader visualize her interpretation of death and eternity. Eric Wilson writes, “Her “gaze” on death is scientific, empirical: focused, intense, patient, she examines the morphology of death before, during, and after its strike.