ENG1300 Week 2 Project Poetry Analysis Poetry Analysis – Final Draft By the due date assigned, submit your revised analytical essay on poetry as a Microso
ENG1300 Week 2 Project Poetry Analysis Poetry Analysis – Final Draft
By the due date assigned, submit your revised analytical essay on poetry as a Microsoft Word document.
Do you need a more engaging opener or a stronger thesis?
Do you need to reinforce your arguments and add more supporting evidence?
Do you have areas to develop or clarify?
Are you satisfied with your conclusion?
Once you have revised the essay, review it for editing issues. Run the spell checker and grammar checker in Word, and then proofread, looking for typos the checkers might have missed. Read it aloud to listen for awkward places and to fine tune the flow. Make sure you have applied APA rules of style to source citations as well as the overall formatting of your essay.
Submit your final draft to the Submissions Area when you are happy with your finished product.
**ROUGH DRAFT AND RUBRIC ARE ATTACHED.
Use correct APA style Running head: POETRY ANALYSIS
1
Poetry Analysis Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Claudia Pierre
South University
Poetry Analysis Because I Could Not Stop for Death
POETRY ANALYSIS
2
For many people, death is considered a tragedy since it signifies the end of life an
inevitable end to life where more often than not people are forced to endure. Death is the main
theme of Emily Dickinson’s poem titled Because I Could Not Stop for Death where the focus is
on the afterlife notions of death. Dickinson considers death in an optimistic way and in a friendly
light as opposed to the horrible end that it is considered. Dickinson portrays death as a gentleman
who takes a woman through a journey that ends in the grave. Dickinson deals with the theme of
afterlife and the travel of the narrator with the personification of death.
In the poem, the speaker does not approach death, but death comes as a gentleman who
picks the narrator in a chariot and the narrator travels alone with death. The civility of death is
shown as he drives steadily and relaxed, which makes the reader comfortable with an otherwise
uncomfortable subject. The chariot passes through town where children are playing, and the
fields are full of grain. The narrator sees the setting sun, which introduces the chill of the night
and the narrator feels a chill and she believes she is not dressed appropriately for the date with
death. The chariot stops before a house which has a mound emerging from the ground. The
narrator realize she has been dead for centuries, yet it feels like yesterday.
“Because I could not stop for Death/ He kindly stopped for me” is the first stanza where
the narrator shows generally how people are too busy to think about death. It is an instinct that
people have to survive to never think about death (Dickinson, 1960). However, death does not
forget and instead comes when the time comes for one to die. To the speaker, death is shown as
kind and it offers a chariot which it uses to take her away. There is a lot of perplexity when the
narrator introduces the word “immortality.” In stanza 2, the narrator introduces the “civility” of
death in his manners. She shows how death was steady in handling the chariot, which helps her
POETRY ANALYSIS
3
forget her labor and instead enjoys the ride (Dickinson, 1960). The description of the ride can be
seen as the smooth passing of the soul after death as a person leaves the world without pain. This
shows that the narrator has come to terms with her mortality.
In the third stanza, Dickinson gives various descriptions of the cycle of life. The chariot
passes children who were playing, which indicates the innocence of childhood, and gazing grain
which has attained fruitfulness to show maturity, and the setting sun which shows old age, and
the darkness takes over. The sunset is portrayed as beautiful and gentle, which shows the passing
of life as being beautiful and gentle as well. However, there is a sudden shift in the fourth
stanza. After the sun has set, the narrator recognizes she is cold and becomes aware that she is
not dressed well. Before the sun sets and there is this moment of realization, the narrator was
comfortable with death (Dickinson, 1960). She was riding in a sheer nightgown, “tippet only
tulle.” In the previous stanzas, the narrator is close with death, and she considers death a
gentleman who is kind and civil and she is not ashamed of being underdressed. However, at
sunset, she is made aware of her inappropriate choice of clothing.
The moment of realization continues through stanza five where they pause in front of her
new “home” and the tone of the poem shifts to disappointment. There is a realization that death
is not all she thought he was. When the sun has set, and she is standing at what will become her
home forever, the narrator’s disappointment sets in. At first, death came as a gentleman suitor
who lured the narrator with promises of eternity. Instead they end up in small home and she is
not pleased (Dickinson, 1960). The house is the grave of the speaker. In the last stanza, it is
revealed that the narrator has been dead for centuries, and the soul is sent to eternity.
POETRY ANALYSIS
4
In the poem Because I Could Not Stop for Death, Dickinson deals with a heavy subject of
death and eternity. However, Dickinson deals with this heavy subject in simple terms, where the
reader is able to understand death better with personification of death as a gentleman. The true
nature of death is shown by how death comes, even when the narrator is not ready, and takes her
to the eternity of her grave. There is, however, “Immortality,” since even after the woman has
dies, she continues to live in eternity (Dickinson, 1960). The poem succeeds in taking death,
which is associated with negative thoughts, and manages to turn opinions about the issue.
POETRY ANALYSIS
5
References
Dickinson, E. (1960). Because I could not stop for death. The Complete Poems of Emily
Dickinson.
Purchase answer to see full
attachment
