Because I Could Not Stop for Death
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The poem by Emily Dickinson “Because I could not stop for Death” is know to be one of the best poems in English. Every image extends and intensifies each other. But there are some pro and cons in this poem.
The poem helps us to characterize and bring death down to a more personal level. It shows a different perspective of death that the more popular views of death being brutal and cruel. Emily Dickinson makes death seem more passive and easy. The theme of this poem being that death is natural and unstoppable for everyday but, at the same time giving comfort that it is not end of the a Souls journey. She uses different words to symbolize the stages of life such as “School, where children strove” may represent childhood, “fields of gazing grain” as maturity and “setting sun” as old age and then the words “horse heads” leads “towards eternity” represents another stage which is eternity and can only be obtained after death. She makes death seem as a kind and civil gentleman.
Even though this poem gives us a very positive overlook of death, a person cannot stop to neglect it and its terror. As seen in the first lines “Because I couldnt stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me”, these line show that death is inevitable and one day everyone has to face it. No matter how positively you take it and no matter how much you try to escape death, it will always one day stands in front of you and you wouldnt be able to go anywhere. One day you will have to leave everything behind all the leisure and comforts. As in this poem the terror of death is objectified through the figures of the genteel driver, who is made ironically to serve the end of immortality.
Therefore the framework of the poem is in the two abstractions, mortality and eternity, which are made to associate in perfect equality with the images. A construction of the human will is elaborated with all the abstracting powers of the mind. They are put to the concrete lest of experience and the idea of immortality is confronted with the fact of physical disintegration.