Death in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson Essay

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Death in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson

In many of her poems Emily Dickinson explores the theme of death. Death is the ultimate experience and reveals the truth about the nature of God and the state of the human soul. Dickinson personifies death in guises, from suitor to tyrant, and her attitude toward death varies from poem to poem, drawing no absolute conclusion about death's nature. The poet portrays death as a terror to be feared and avoided, a trick on humanity played by God, a welcome relief, and a way to heaven.

Poem XXXV begins "I heard a fly buzz when I died;" (Dickinson, p. 153, Line 1). This poem presents death as painless yet gruesome. The image of the buzzing of a fly as the last conscious awareness of a dying soul is both disconcerting and quite possibly a reality.

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In poem XLV, which begins, "Because I could not stop for Death / He kindly stopped for me;" (Dickinson, p. 159, Lines 1-2), death is personified as a gentleman caller or a suitor. Though the speaker in the poem refers to deaths "kindness" and "civility" it is left to the reader to decide if this manner is real or an illusion designed to seduce the speaker into the clutches of death. The speaker also alludes to the finality of death; death is the passage to "Immortality" (Line 4) for "eternity" (Line 20).

Poem XVI begins "Safe in their alabaster chambers, / Untouched by morning and untouched by noon, / Sleep the meek members of resurrection, / Rafter of satin, roof of stone" (Dickinson, p. 137, Lines 1-4). The irony of this poem is that the.....

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