...Emily Dickinson “Because I could not stop for Death-” and “I heard a Fly buzz- when I died” Emily Dickinson has a very intriguing manner of writing. Exploring her poems, I realize she conveys her own obsession with demise. Many of her writings on this subject depict death in different ways. It is represented as a gentle metaphor or as a hopeless distraction. Dickinson portrays these contrasting views of death in her poems: “Because I could not stop for Death” and “I heard a Fly buzz- when I died.” Kreidler, Michele L. "Emily Dickinson "Because I Could Not Stop For Death." Literary Contexts In Poetry: Emily Dickinson's 'Because I Could Not Stop For Death' (2009): 1. Literary Reference Center. Web. 29 May 2014. Meyer, Michael. "The Study of Emily Dickinson." The compact Bedford introduction to literature: reading, thinking, writing. 9th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2012. . Print Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death,” follows a woman’s passage from expiry into eternal life. The carriage that picks her up is a representation of immortality, while death is embodied as a gentleman that is taking a friend on a carriage ride. The driver “knew no haste” as they slowly drove. This personified version of death is kind and peaceful. As they continue on their trip, it is understood that death is a normal part of existence as they ride passed ordinary events of being; students playing, beautiful fields, and the setting sun. The conclusion of the poem...
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...was a great legend made in the history of poetry. Emily Dickinson, a famous American Poet who resided in Amherst Massachusetts, was born to a successful family who was thought of highly by many members of the community. Although, her reluctance to meet and greet people and her reputation of keeping to herself, made people think of her as strange and anti-social. Dickinson studied at the Amherst Academy in Massachusetts. However, even though Dickinson did not have many relationships with friends or people, this did not stop her from making the best out of her career. As a private prolific poet, Dickson was blessed with great success dealing with her poetry. She has had about one thousand eight hundred of her poems published in her life time, including After great pain, a formal feeling comes, and I heard a Fly buzz-when I died-; two poems which Dickinson is popular for today. These two poems strongly illustrate a theme of death and dying, to assist the reader understand and analyze the depth of this theme; Dickinson uses strong symbolism, tone, and figurative language throughout her works. Dickinson’s symbolism throughout these two poems is strong and magnificent. In After great pain, a formal feeling comes the author uses many objects to symbolize feelings having to relate with the major theme of death and dying. “The nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs” (line 2). Dickinson uses the comparison of the nerves to tombs because the tombs symbolize death, as well as stone and stiffness...
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...“Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” “I Heard a Fly Buzz,” and “Death, Be Not Proud” speak on death. Emily Dickinson wrote both “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” and “I Heard a Fly Buzz.” John Donne composed “Death, Be Not Proud.” These poems, written over 200 years apart, show how people continually try to understand and process death. Dickenson and Donne used different rhyming patterns to express their thoughts on death. It seems that the only similarities that these authors share appears to be that they wrote about death and were both poets. Emily Dickinson wrote “Because I could not stop for Death” in 1863. Dickinson's poem was not published until 1890, twenty-seven years after it was written and 4 years after Dickinson died. Emily Dickinson spent her life living in isolation. Some consider this Dickinson's most famous poem. In this poem, Dickenson looks at death and the journey that “Death” goes on. Death passes a schoolyard, fields of grain, and the setting sun as it heads toward eternity....
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...Emily Dickinson had many tragic life experiences that influenced her poetry and caused her to write on the theme of death. Dickenson’s life was filled with multiple tragic deaths, which caused her to spend half of her life in sorrow. She experienced many deaths of people close to her, in which influenced her writing as a major reoccurring theme. Although Emily Dickinson wrote about death, she often times wrote about it in very odd ways such as death being eternal but also death as a state of life and this can be seen in her poems, “Because I could not stop for Death”, “I heard a Fly buzz”, and “I died for Beauty. Emily Dickinson writes the majority of her poetry during a period of stress because of the Civil War, which also influenced the depressing yet unique way of her poems. Her poem, “Because I could not stop for Death”, is an ironic allegory in which death is portrayed as a gentleman. In the first line she writes, “Because I could not stop for death/ He kindly stopped for me” (1-2) meaning that she is coming to meet death on his own terms. Usually death is shown as being unavoidable and all around evil, but Dickinson describes her carriage ride as, “I had put away/ My labor and my leisure too/ For His Civility,” (6-8). She describes death as being civil meaning that death was courteous and polite. The way that Dickinson capitalizes “His” gives that line a possible religious context as well because when writing about God, His name is always capitalized. The next line speaks...
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...“I dwell in Possibility” by Emily Dickinson is a poem about all the opportunity poetry obtains. Throughout this poem, Dickinson elaborately compares poetry to an elegant house. It is noted that Dickinson is comparing the house to poetry in the second line where she stated “A fairer House than Prose” in which prose means the opposite of poetry. She states that she dwells in possibility meaning that she lives in all the possibility poetry has. The house has many windows which symbolizes the many visions and viewpoints that poems may acquire. She then goes off and talks about all the rooms the house has which shows the endless options and freedom there is. The house cannot be seen by eye, which helps support the idea of poetry being represented...
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...Whitman Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson's works have numerous differences. Compared to Dickinson's short and seemingly simple poems, Whitman's are long and often complex. Yet both twentieth century writers share several similarities when scrutinized thoroughly. Though their approaches differ, they often deal with the same themes, and both pioneered their own unique style of writing. Using death as a theme is probably the strongest connection that Whitman and Dickinson share. Whitman's view on death is reflective of his belief in Transcendentalism. In "Song of Myself", Whitman uses the scientific principle of the conservation of energy to assert that there is life after death, because energy cannot be destroyed; only transformed. In stanza six, he writes "And what do you think has become of the women and children?/ They are alive and well somewhere,/ The smallest sprouts shows there is really no death" (Whitman 124-126). Whitman contends that life remains long after death, Dickinson's writings on death are more complex and contradictory. She personifies death, generally seeing as a lord or as a compelling lover. In one of her more popular poems, "Because I could not stop for Death", death is like a kindly courter. He picks her up in a "Carriage held but just for Ourselves-/ And Immortality" (Dickinson 3-4). Many of her other poems are about the moment of death, and what happens when the living cross over into the dead. In "I heard a Fly buzz- when I died", Dickinson tries to explain...
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...2014 04.03B Emily Dickinson “I Never Saw A Moor” 1. What is the contrast that the poet establishes between the first and second halves of this poem? The contrast the poet establishes between the first and second halves of the poem is seeing a moor and speaking with God. “A word is Dead” 2. Explain what the poet means when she says the word “lives” once it has spoken. When the poet says the word “lives,” she is stating that the word brings it to life. “Because I Could Not Stop For Death” – Analyzing Details 3. What kind of person is Death? How does the poet characterize him? Death is characterized as being kind and immortal. He is a civilized and polite person. The poet describes his “civility” and how he “kindly” stopped her since he drives the carriage. 4. What does the “house” in stanza #5 symbolize? The house in stanza five symbolizes a grave or death. Much like a person almost dead, they are just lying in their bed. 5. Readers often have different opinions about the final stanza of the poem. Some believe it holds a tone of terror, while others think it expresses confidence and acceptance. What do you think? Explain your answer. The poet does not have a tone of terror here, because the inevitability of death makes life worth living. Death can be counted as a blessing when it comes to an immortal life on Earth that would be a curse. 6. Choose one of Dickinson’s poems and explain how you think it reflects the time period in which she lived. I chose the...
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...I heard a fly buzz - When i died The death in this poem is painless, yet the vision of death it presents is horrifying, even gruesome. The appearance of an ordinary, insignificant fly at the climax of a life at first merely startles and disconcerts us. But by the end of the poem, the fly has acquired dreadful meaning. Clearly, the central image is the fly. It makes a literal appearance in three of the four stanzas and is what the speaker experiences in dying. The room is silent except for the fly. The poem describes a lull between "heaves," suggesting that upheaval preceded this moment and that more upheaval will follow. It is a moment of expectation, of waiting. There is "stillness in the air," and the watchers of her dying are silent. And still the only sound is the fly's buzzing. The speaker's tone is calm, even flat; her narrative is concise and factual. The people witnessing the death have exhausted their grief (their eyes are "wrung dry" of tears). Her breathing indicates that "that last onset" or death is about to happen. "Last onset" is an oxymoron; "onset" means a beginning, and "last" means an end. For Christians, death is the beginning of eternal life. Death brings revelation, when God or the nature of eternity becomes known. This is why "the king / Be witnessed in his power." The king may be God, Christ, or death; think about which reading you prefer and why. She is ready to die; she has cut her attachments to this world (given away "my keepsakes") and anticipates...
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...Caroline Merrick Instructor Mason ENG 231-352 9 October 2014 The Many Sides of Death The world has forever struggled to understand the complex and thoughtful mind of the poet Emily Dickinson. For most of her life she remained a recluse, isolated from society, and left to do what she loved to do, which was write. Dickinson witnessed a lot of hardships in her later years, including the deaths of many family members and friends. Witnessing so much death in her lifetime sparked her interest in the concept of mortality, and it appears as a major theme in many of her poems. Dickinson seemed to have many different ideas about the subject of death. Three poems that represent these different viewpoints on the subject are “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died,” “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” and “I felt a Funeral in my Brain.” Although all of these poems are about death, each of them represents it in a different way. “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” is a representation of one of Emily Dickinson’s views of death. This poem emphasizes the journey that one takes from life to eternity. This journey is represented as a carriage ride with death. Death in this poem is personified and appears as a kindly gentlemen who was courteous enough to stop for the narrator when she was too busy to stop for him. On the carriage ride, Death takes the narrator through scenes of her childhood. In lines nine through twelve, “We passed the School, where Children strove/ At Recess-in the...
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...happy,” which is ironic because when the storm ended so did the affair between Alcee and Calixta and I think that Calixta was truly happy that her husband and son came home safely. I also think my ending the story by saying, “So the storm passed and everyone was happy,” shows the audience that Calixta and Alcee are happy that their spouses will never learned about their betrayal and their affair, and things can go back to normal they way that they were before the storm came. I feel that the storm caused Calixta to betray her husband because before the storm arrived she was happily married and she would have never thought to betray her husband, but once she heard about the storm and her friend Alcee comes to her house to comfort her, Calixta lets her emotions take over and she betrays her husband, which she will probably regret down the road....
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...THE B L A C K SWAN The HIGHLY I mpact IM of the PROBABLE Nassim Nicholas Taleb U.S.A. $26.95 Canada $34.95 is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpre dictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9 / 1 1 . For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives. A BLACK SWAN Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don't know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate oppor tunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the "impossible." For years, Taleb has studied how we fool our selves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. Now, in this reve latory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don't know. He offers...
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