Comparison of Two Poems by Emily Dickinson About Death
Uploaded by 2cool4u on Dec 29, 2004
Two Poems, Two Ideas, One Author.
Two of Emily Dickinson's poems, "Because I Could Not Stop For Death" and "I Heard A Fly Buzz-When I Died," are both about one of life's few certainties: death. However, that is where the similarities end. Although both poems were created less than a year apart by the same poet, their ideas about what lies after death differ. In one, there appears to be life after death, but in the other there is nothing. Only a number of clues in each piece help us determine which poem believes in what.
In the piece, "Because I Could Not Stop For Death," we are being told the tale of a woman who is being taken away by Death. This is our first indication that this poem believes in an afterlife. In most religions, where there is a grim reaper like specter, this entity will deliver a person's soul to another place, usually a heaven or a hell.
In the fifth stanza, Death and the woman pause before "...a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground- The Roof was scarcely visible- The Cornice in the Ground-" (913). Although the poem does not directly say it, it is highly probable that this grave is the woman's own. It is also possible the woman's body already rests beneath the soil in a casket. If this is at all accurate, then her spirit or soul may be the one who is looking at the "house." Spirits and souls usually mean there is an afterlife involved.
It isn't until the sixth and final stanza where the audience obtains conclusive evidence that "Because I Could Not Stop For Death" believes in an afterlife. The woman recalls how it has been "...Centuries- and yet feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses' Heads were toward Eternity-" (913). To the woman, it has been a few hundred years since Death visited her, but to her, it has felt like less than 24 hours. Since the body cannot live on for hundreds of years, then it must be none other then the soul who has come to the realization that so much time has passed. The final part with the horses refers to the horse drawn carriage the woman was riding in when she passed away. In those two final lines, the horses seem to be leading her into Eternity, possibly into an afterlife.
It is just...