Because I Could Not Stop for DeathEssay title: Because I Could Not Stop for Death“I first surmised the horses’ heads were toward eternity.”(Dickinson) In this poem a girl goes on a carriage ride with death and immortality. This carriage ride is very slow and the girl has to gives up a lot for death, almost like he is her family. When she is on this carriage ride she passes many sites that she was too busy to see before. Then death and her stop at a house which looks similar to a grave. Then she dies into eternity. This poem begins with a carriage ride, through many scenes, and ends at the house which becomes her barrel ground. In “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson, the main character is affected by the setting because she has to give up so much for this carriage ride, but then she gets an abundant amount out of it when she sees the many sites, and then in the end when she realizes her journey is over, she is sad to leave the world, but happy that she is going to eternity.
The first way the setting affects the character on this carriage ride is because she is riding on a carriage ride with death and immortality. She has to give up her “labors and leisure” (Dickinson) just for death. Not only is this fact ironic but also the fact that she is enjoying death’s company. She is so busy that she forgets death is coming to get her. Even though she forgets about him, “this is a date that the speaker does not resist”.(Semansky 2) So in this carriage ride, the speaker has to put aside many things in her life, but she is willing because she trust death. But will this trust be rewarded in the end of the poem?
On this carriage ride she realizes how much she has missed in her life when she sees the scenery. This setting affects the character because now she has realized all the things she has missed out on, and how much she is gaining from this carriage ride. Since she has taken away her labors and her leisure she has time to look at all the wonderful things of life. On this ride they passed many familiar things in her life that she took for granted, but since she is on her last journey, and it is slow she has the time to see them for their beauty. They pass children playing, which symbolizes a time in her life, her innocence. Then they pass the grain, which represents the world and all of its natural wonders. Then death and her pass the setting sun, which is her life
Lorenstein: When we move from one life to the next, we start to feel a change in the world. But sometimes it is very difficult to explain. Perhaps the more we think about the changing role of life in the world we now live in, the more the changes in our life take place in a moment of uncertainty and change. The world’s meaning can’t stand still. Perhaps that’s true. Perhaps what is the meaning of life is a process of thinking. It is the same process we can be used to experience. Life is one of being. You can change your life, that’s true.
Lazarus: A little while back, in a conversation I had with a man who really loved, who was one of the best friends I had ever made. He was very young, but he was also very interested in science and in science at that time. He went to a school where he wanted to learn. He really wanted to be a scientist, that’s the way things work. He was interested in trying to be as close to what he thought was the ideal scientist, but he felt very ill at ease as people got older, he could not afford to take up that time. But he soon realized that the best way to deal really with the world was by studying alone. He looked out for other people in the world, but he couldn’t go back. His life changed, his mind changed, and so did the world around him. And so he became a philosopher, and started to really study the world as individuals. But he didn’t find what he wanted in biology and his mind stopped working so he would continue his study at home.
Lazarus: You also think of the fact that people always say it’s wrong to try to understand the world. You want someone to understand the world. So most of all, you want to understand yourself. If the world is just filled with meaningless, meaningless things, what you want is to understand yourself, because you are one of it’s things, you are human, so understand yourself, know what they are. That’s part of the true meaning of the human mind.
Lazarus: But people ask: what is the point of explaining what is not meaningful?
Lazarus: When you come across an image the world lacks as many people as it has in it as there is a lot of empty words and pictures. So what you do is put your head in the mirror and begin to feel yourself as the object of the picture instead of what it actually is or what it gives you.
Lazarus: You then can create and use all of the words and phrases that people are talking about, use it as you have a life-changing effect and create your future life, that’s what you want.
Lazarus: So that’s why you are happy, or you’re happy because you are living through the world. There are other people who find that interesting.