Death in the eyes of Emily Dickinson by Denver E. Torres and Nguyen Van Dinh

In this paper, we will attempt to analyze Emily Dickinson’s poem entitled Because I Could Not Stop for Death using the Biographical perspective. We will proceed by giving general remarks on the poem and discuss each stanza.  The general sense and subject of the said poem that is to be revealed in the following paragraphs will be used to highlight the importance of Emily’s real life experiences that helped her write this poem and possibly all her poems. But the focus of our investigation is only on this poem.

 

Death, Immortality, centuries (Time) and eternity—these words found throughout the poem Because I Could Not Stop for Death are but perennially present both in theological and philosophical books. To talk about these matters is but requiring not only a mature mind but intelligent, deep and critical mind altogether. Also, in this work of Emily Dickinson, one can see her spiritual temerity; this poem hints us of Dickinson’s direct and indirect social milieus, her life’s experiences and mental construct.

 

More importantly, this poem reveals the poet’s pains. Palpably, the poem speaks much of the author’s view on death and mortality. Here, Dickinson shows both her recognition and reception of the transient existence of human thus including her brother, parents and some important people to her. And the poem itself serves as proof of that pain and poignancy she feels towards the inevitable death. 

 

The poem starts with a very dramatic entrance of Death riding a carriage. It paints a clear visual of three personalities riding a carriage: Death, I (the poem’s persona) and Immortality. The poem declares that the persona died and the person narrates his own afterlife experience. The first four lines introduce us to the next scenes to happen.

 

The second stanza is telling us that the carriage is trailing a way slowly. And for allowing the no-haste travel, the persona willfully set aside the two things: labour and leisure. In this stanza, the persona is ready to leave the place.

  

The third stanza is so powerful in setting the visual mood of the reader. The words lessons scarcely done and setting sun are strong allusions to human mortality. These pictures are affirmation of the sense of “end.” Thus, speaking further of the end of the persona’s existence.

 

The fourth stanza is a necessary follow up of the scenes we saw in the third stanza. This part of the poem is supplementary to the conviction of the persona that is all earthly things will have an end. Furthermore, this stanza imposes the persona’s conviction by pointing to the fact that even things with no life such as the “house” and “cornice” will meet their eventual end.

 

The last stanza is very effective both in style and language. The words Feels shorter than the day are but terse yet effective way of saying that the time is but not the time the persona used to know. It is a different time, a new dimension. Then, the persona sees the “horses’ heads” heading “toward eternity.” This fifth stanza ends the last and short, almost fleeting experience of the persona before eclipsing into the so called “eternity.”

 

From start to finish, the poem brings us to an experience that is extraordinary, even a private experience of how the persona’s existence ended. All parts of the poem are consistent that makes the poem powerful as we elucidated above.

 

The viewpoint of the persona is very much like of a person coming from a field of religion (theological) and or philosophy. With this, we declare that this poem is undeniably a work of Emily Dickinson. This experience of death or similar experience is evident in Dickinson’s life. Emily Dickinson is a witness to several deaths in their family. We quote from our source:

 

By the early 1870’s Emily’s ailing mother was confined to her bed and Emily and her sister cared for her. Around the time her father Edward died suddenly in 1874 she stopped going out in public though she still kept up her social contacts via correspondence, writing at her desk in her austere bedroom, and seemed to have enjoyed her solitude. She regularly tended the homestead’s gardens and loved to bake, and the neighborhood children sometimes visited her with their rambunctious games. In 1878 her friend Samuel Bowles died and another of her esteemed friends Charles Wadsworth died in 1882, the same year her mother succumbed to her lengthy illness. A year later her brother Austin’s son Gilbert died. Dickinson herself had been afflicted for some time with her own illness affecting the kidneys, Bright’s Disease, symptoms of which include chronic pain and edema, which may have contributed to her seclusion from the outside world.

 

With all this witnessing of death and departure, it is not a wonder that Dickinson develops a sense of acceptance, even embracing the factuality of death.

 

But the most notable and interesting thing in her poem is the viewpoint of the persona in it. The persona shows maturity in dealing with death, the poem shows no struggle. There is this sense of calm and quite acceptance of death both as an ordinance and reality. This is similarly a viewpoint of person coming from a religious family. True in fact, Emily Dickinson hails from a Calvinist family.

 

She was a deeply sensitive woman who questioned the puritanical background of her Calvinist family and soulfully explored her own spirituality, often in poignant, deeply personal poetry.

 

Apart from her religious family, she also studies in a seminary for several months. This shows that she is person who studies philosophy, sacraments, theology and other religious studies.

 

Dickinson proved to be a dazzling student and in 1847, though she was already somewhat of a ‘homebody’, at the age of seventeen Emily left for South Hadley, Massachusetts to attend the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. She stayed there less than a year and some of the theories as to why she left are homesickness and poor health.

 We think that the Biographical Approach is a fitting tool in studying Emily Dickinson’s Because I Could Not Stop for Death. It is so as the poem’s subject (Death) is a familiar and repetitive experience in her life. Moreover, her studies at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary offer her mature and critical understanding of death.