Emily Dickinson’s attitude towards death in "Because I couldn’t stop for death"
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. His father was a successful lawyer. She was educated at the Amherst and Mount Holyoake academies, during her early years she was lively, resourceful and sociable, but from her twenties she gradually retreated to an inner world, reaching her forties, refusing to leave home and avoiding all contact. With strangers. , although he maintained intimate correspondence with people whom he never saw face to face. Her emotional life remains a mystery, despite much speculation about a possible disappointed love affair, for which one candidate is the Reverend Charles Wadworth, with whom she corresponded and who visited her twice, another is Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield. Republican, to whom she sent and directed many poems.
He wrote poetry from his childhood, but it is known that only seven poems from 2000 were published during his lifetime and that they appeared anonymously and heavily edited. At first she was considered an eccentric minor poet, but after the publication of her other poems she is now considered an important writer of surprising originality. His work presents recurring themes – a mystical apprehension of the natural world, a concern for the poetic vocation, fame, death and – it is expressed in its own rhetoric and language, cryptic, elliptical and, at times, self-dramatizing and hyperbolic.
In the poem “Because I could not stop because of death”, he appears as a cunning runner to woo the poet. The poet busy with his earthly activities has not sought death. Rather, death has kindly stopped at home to take her away, as a lover takes his loved one. Once again, death at this time is not alone, but has immortality as a companion. This suggests that death is taking the poet to her wedding room in heaven.
In the poem Dickinson shows her triumphs over death, as she is willing to accept it calmly and calmly. She puts “work” and her “leisure too” aside because she is impressed by the courtesy of death. When the carriage begins its journey, it has three characters: the poet, death, and immortality. Little by little they passed through the world of the living symbolized by the schoolchildren who played in the ring. Then they leave behind the grain fields looking and the setting sun. the sensations that little by little they are leaving the sense of time and space are expressed in the following lines.
“We passed the setting sun” – In other words, they have just left behind a life that is limited by time and space. Conventionally, death is associated with sunset and also with damp and cold when the poet suddenly notices his dress. “For just chiffon, my dress ——–“. From the description it is clear that his journey is from life to death and eternity.
Finally, the poet arrives at the house of death. This house is his grave – “A swelling of the ground.” Since then, he has not been aware of the passage of time. It has probably been several centuries. But he feels that the centuries are shorter than the day he realized that the head of the horses pointed towards eternity. Dickinson imagines a post-death situation. The image of the horse’s head conveys the amazing power and majesty associated with death.
Therefore, the poem finely expresses Dickinson’s opinion on death. The poet points out the inevitability of death, minimizing, at the same time, its fearsome aspect. Although there is an ironic twist to the narrative, we find that the poets sincerely believe in immortality and heaven. In fact, Dickinson expresses his attitude towards death and immortality in symbolic language.