International Journal of English

and Literature (IJEL)

ISSN 2249-6912
Vol. 3, Issue 4, Oct 2013, 111-114
© TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.

A VIEW OF DEATH IN EMILY DICKINSON’S “BECAUSE I COULD NOT

STOP FOR DEATH”

K. RAJESH & C. ARUN

1
Assistant Professor of English, Indian Arts & Science College, Karaiyandal Kondam, Thiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu, India
2
Reseach Scholar, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India

ABSTRACT

This paper “Because I could not stop for Death” deals about one of the special qualities of life and experience of
Emily Dickinson’s ‘inner life’. It views on death and immortality is rendered with an artistic perfection. She lived a life of
the imagination. She skillfully handle the effect of death is unexpected victim in human life is going for drive with death.
Death takes us to the end of life but also beyond, due to the presence of Immortality. Death is not something to get fear but
something to expect and live with all our lives.

KEYWORDS: God, Love, Death, Eternity, Majority, Emily Dickinson’s Poetry

INTRODUCTION

Death is one of the important themes of Emily Dickinson’s poetry. She has written many poems about it and
seems to be over pre-occupied with it. She felt death was her early acquaintance in her life for fifteen years, up to her
twenty five years, she lived pleasant street from where she watched the funeral procession of Amherst passing the
cemetery, the forest of the death. The death of her friend sofia Holland left her in a friend Melancholy, when she was only
thirteen years her friend made her feel herself with high depression in her loneliness.

Thus, as a child of New England Puritanism Emily Dickinson was sternly bought up in a strict household, shut off
from much of life, a passionate rebel, defiant in her feeling, thinking and expression. The poems of Emily Dickinson are
totally different from those of any other writers, British or America. Emily Dickinson is a fine poet. Her poems are filled
with natural description, the defining moral and mystical experiences or the inclusive experiences of immortality. She
wrote many of her poems in solitude. Many of her poems pain deal near disaster. From her window she caught suggestions
that gave her fancy, picture, an image. A dead fly on her window pane stirred her imagination. She saw the bluebirds
darting round and these observation into her mind. The visible sitting of her poems was the New England country side.

The poem describes Emily Dickinson’s favorite subject, the effect of death upon a human being. Instead of the
human fear or religious awe usually associated with death, death is portrayed as a restful trip, a pleasant journey with a
courteous visitor and an unnoticed third traveler, immortality.

There are various motifs or themes that repeat themselves in various poems of Emily Dickinson. Under the few
general titles like God, Love, Death, Eternity, a majority of her poems deal with death. Her linguistic ability helped her to
concentrate on surprising metaphors. Her use of language was so precise that no part of her poems, not even a single word,
was redundant. This gave her poems an epigrammatic form. It is to be noticed that the moment when the readers begin to
read her poem instantly they enter a world that is full of tension and there are so many forces universal and eternal that
begin act on them. These ideas occure each of every lines. This may be the secret of the success of Emily Dickinson’s
poems.
112 K. Rajesh & C. Arun

Death and the problem of life are being obsessed her, which seems to have thought of its daily. She felt that her
life was dead. Ultimately the obsession became Morbid. Her eagerness for details after the death of friend, to know how
someone had died became almost vulture-like. In spite of that a large number of Emily Dickinson’s poems investigate the
nature of pain, its effects human soul, relation with death. This poem seems on whole poems dealing with Misery,
Anguish, and Philosophy of life.

The whole of man’s existences in life through death and into eternity is related as though it is a drive in a horse
carriage, whose driver and owner is death.

“The carriage held but just ourselves

And Immortality………………”

According to “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” shows her preoccupation with the moment of change and her
fascination with compare to her between life and death. This is perhaps the most famous single poem of Emily Dickinson
and also one of the most characteristic one. It is Metaphysical in style. She wrote a mock biographical sketch of death in
the poem.

This is the point to be kept in mind while reading the poem. It seems merely the description of a drive in a
carriage, but this drive embraces all of man’s human experiences and beyond. Emily Dickinson closely examines subject of
death the sensations of dying, the terrible struggle of the body for life, the adjustments in a house after death, the arranging
of the body for the funeral, the church services, and even the thoughts of the dead persons.

If death results in despair and terror it also brings rest and peace and it increase one’s enjoyment of life. Both the
dying in the cycle of nature and the death of those dear to her had a deep effect on the poet that her understanding of death
is inevitably influenced very strongly her feelings itself.

CONCLUSIONS

In Allen Tate ‘New criticism’ is displayed his critical views on Emily Dickinson poem in “Because I could not
Stop for Death” is one of the perfect poem in English. The poem has another title called ‘the Chariot’ which is symbolizing
the journey from mortality to eternity. He also reveals the poem, it does not convey a religious truth her Journey in terms of
two abstractions from ‘Mortality to Eternity’,

It is noteworthy that Emily Dickinson does not present the traditional Christian concepts of life sin-salutation
death and then immortal life. The poem shows the fusion of thought and emotion very much as is found in the
metaphysical poets, Especially John Done although it is new expressed in modern terms. The poem skillfully handles the
effect of death’s unexpected visit upon the victim, viewing her progression from flustered self pleasure and doubt into a
full realization of death’s deception and terrifying purpose. Death is seen in the poem from various angles: as a welcome
relief from life’s tension; as a force which heightens one’s satisfaction with life; as a lover gently conveying one to the
hidden pleasures.

REFERENCES

1. Johnson, Thomas H. Emily Dickinson, New York: An Interpretive Biography, Cambridge, Mass, Harvard
University Press, 1955.

2. Henry W.Wells. Introduction to Emily Dickinson:

A View of Death in Emily Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” 113

3. Richard B.Sewall. Ed. Emily Dickinson – A Collection of Critical Essays.

4. Ramji Lall. Emily Dickinson – An Evaluation of Her Poetry.

5. Emily Dickinson –The Mind of the poet. Cambridge, Mass.Harvard University Press, 1965.

6. Charles R.Anderson. Emily Dickinson’s poetry. New York: Holt, 1960.

7. Thomas H.Johnson Ed. The Complete poems of: Emily Dickinson,Oxford University press.