In Because I Could Not Stop For Death, Emily Dickinson creates a peaceful but lonesome tone. She also reminds us how life can begin and end all too quickly, before we can enjoy all the important moments and how we simply pass them by. Human beings often get so caught up in their lives that they neglect the things that are most important. For instants a father or mother missing their child’s first basketball game, because they are so tired up in their demanding job. Individuals do not search out death, but death comes searching for us, no matter how busy we become. Emily Dickinson writes how she was too busy, and could not slow down for death, but death “kindly” stopped for her.

The carriage carries her away, as she watches life go on without her presence. Since death is the driver of the carriage, only it knows the predetermined destination for the individual that it is carrying. “The carriage held but just ourselves," implies that death is an event that we must face alone. The carriage ride progresses from her childhood, maturity, to the setting sun that shadows her grave. “We

The room of the dying is haunted by an uncomfortable, daunting “Silence.” The comparison of the quietness to "the stillness in the Air between the heaves of storm” intensifies the feeling of anticipation for some frightening event, like death.

passed the school, where children strove At recess, in the ring,” here we are shown Emily’s childhood memories and then the carriage quickly continues on until, “We passed the fields of gazing grain.” The passing of the fields and the ripe grazing grain is the next step to Emily’s life, where she turns into a mature woman. “We passed the setting sun;” the sun is dying and soon the earth will be covered in shear darkness, which represents death approaching Emily. As the sun sets, you can feel the chill of death upon your shoulders. “The Dews drew quivering and chill,” here we are shown the absence of warmth in life. “We paused before a house that seemed A swelling of the ground,” the swelling of the ground marks her last resting spot on the valued earth. Dickinson finishes the poem by ending her carriage ride. “The Horses’ Heads Were toward Eternity,” pointing her in the direction of her fate.

Many poems insist on life after death, a spiritual reawakening. In I Heard A Fly Buzz-When I Died, the poem begins and ends on a note of obliteration and overwhelming darkness, accompanied only by the sound of the buzzing fly. Unlike “Because I Could Not Stop For Death,” this poem has an ambiguous and gloomy tone.

Emily Dickins

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