Emily Dickinson is one of the greatest American poets. She only saw seven of her eighteen hundred poems published. She sent hundreds of her poems to critics and publishers, but all of the feedback she got was negative. Some of the negative feedback was because females in the eighteen hundreds were not suppose to be writers. Some of the negative criticism was because no one liked her ideas about death. Emily Dickinson presents a different perspective on death; she makes death seem like an every day nice guy in her poem "Because I Could Not Stop for Death.".
Death does not take the speaker to her eternal home until she is ready. "Because I could not stop for Death- He kindly stopped for me-" (Dickinson 1). Her life is was very busy and she did not have time to die whenever Death showed up. Therefore, Death kindly waited for her until she was ready to die. Death was in fact being a gentleman. Dickinson uses personification by making Death an actual person. She not only capitalizes "Death" throughout the poem, but she also refers to him as "he." "[B]y anthropomorphizing Death as a kind and civil gentleman, the speaker particularizes Death's characteristics with favorable connotations" (Shaw 1). For instance, Dickinson uses words like: "played" (9), "fields of grazing grain" (11), "setting sun" (12), "slowly drove" (5), and she refers to death as having "civility" (8). When most people think of death, they do not think of death as a kind, and civil guy. In fact, many people think of death as the exact opposite. People think death is a mean guy who wants to take you away from your worldly pleasures and loved ones. Dickinson does not suggest otherwise, but she is leaving the possibility open. She is suggesting that death is what people think it is, and that we do not need to get our hopes up. In "I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died," also by Dickinson, the speaker sees a fly at the point of death instead of God who she was hoping for.
