Emily Dickinson's Poetry Essay

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Emily Dickinson’s poetry carries recurring themes of death and immortality. Death is a natural aspect of life that everyone eventually becomes acquainted with and is a familiarity that is hard to conceptualize. Dickinson seeks to find the meaning through her poetry and uses specific methods of myth, diction, and symbolism to explore the concept. Through myth and symbolism Dickinson shows the reader a new lens at looking at death and diction further emphasizes these themes. In the poem Dickinson talks about her acceptance of death as an inevitable occurrence which is out of her control; although she seems torn between both life and death through the narration. A reflection from life to the after-life, Dickinson uses poetic methods to describe …show more content…
She is excited to venture on this journey with the two companions and pleased by deaths, “His Civility,” courtesy she is willing to set aside here anguish and freedom to enjoy it, “And I had put away/ My labor and my leisure too,”. Upon death, trouble and leisure are naturally taken away. The choise of the word ‘Civility’ further gives personification to our Grim Reaper and flips our understanding of death on a happy life exchange. It now appears as if she wanted to die sooner but couldn’t, and death approached her in a slow illness. The carriage now seems to represent a hearse or some vehicle that carries her to the next world.
The third stanza plays out as her life movie being played in front of her as they pass “the School”, “the Fields of Gazing Grain --”, and “the Setting Sun.” The word choice in this stanza helps bring out the connections of the poem to the reader. The children at play remind her of her own childhood, full of life. The grains suggest a time of harvest and emergence; she gazes at them as if there was time in her life that passed right by her. The setting sun, or the approaching end of life is near. Death is giving her a tour of her life and memories and the last glimpse of life is slowly

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