Considered one of the most original and greatest poets in American literature, Emily Dickinson seeks through her poetry to challenge the reader's vision of her, often through themes of death, pain, truth and fame. She is believed to have lived much of her life in isolation, communicating with friends only through letters, and to have never married, which was unusual for the period in which she lived. She was an extremely prolific writer, writing over 1,800 poems during her lifetime. However, fewer than a dozen of them were published in his lifetime. His poems were discovered only after his death in 1886 by his younger sister Lavinia. His first collection was published in 1890 but heavily edited by his acquaintances. The first complete and unaltered collection of poems was printed in 1955, when Thomas H. Johnson, a scholar, published them as The Poems of Emily Dickinson. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay. This poem analysis paper will look at the various examples of how Dickinson views death. Death is often considered the end. It terrifies and awaits all of us, it steals a person's remaining days without giving them a chance to react. Is this why people love life so much? Or is it because of the uncertainty that death brings us? Living in such fear, is one truly living? Or do we live primarily so that we can die and become one with something else? People often think they know the answers to all these questions, or at the very least, they pretend to know the answers. Dickinson never knew these answers and that is why she dedicated many of her poems in hopes of answering these questions, which will be addressed in this poetic analysis essay through Dickinson's three poems: I Like a Look of Agony (or poem 241), For I could not stop for Death, and I heard the buzz of a fly - when I died. The first analysis of the poem on I like a look of Agony. The narrator talks about how they prefer to see pain and agony in people, because it is truthful. However, the poem develops around a certain type of agony, and it is that which precedes Death. Dickinson doesn't talk about the inevitability of death, how she would like to escape it, or its suddenness in a moment we didn't expect. . This is more of the only time a person can be openly honest about themselves and is unable to express their emotions. Throughout life, in the hope of assimilating and being accepted into a community, people are often forced to conform to certain socially accepted norms and behaviors. In a sense, people put different masks on their faces so that they can take turns controlling their emotions and actions in every possible situation, so as not to be manipulated by others and vice versa. However, the only adversary before which every person must become completely transparent and honest is death. This is the time when no mask can hide the true face of a person or his frank emotions. The agony that precedes death, be it pain or pure terror in the face of the unknown, forces each person to tear everything away from themselves and show the soul that hides underneath. Dickinson shows us the very moment of death's triumph over a person as a method of freeing him from the labors of Sisyphus, from the chains and masks in which society has imprisoned him. Ironically, death in this poem is not a punishment or an end: death is a symbol of freedom. All the burdens that a person is forced to carry throughout his life are lifted in an instant, the very moment death occurs.It also gives the poem a rather optimistic tone, somewhat unusual for Dickinson's poetry. Furthermore, the poem does not make the reader fear death, but rather arouses a certain type of curiosity: could death be seen as a kind of rebirth? ? If you look through the lens of religion, it could mean a journey to heaven as in the Abrahamic religions, but it could also mean a kind of reincarnation which can be found in Buddhism and Hinduism. However, if religious parameters are set aside, this type of death can be seen as a soul finally freed from a mortal body and a person freed from social norms and obligations. Could death be seen as a joyful moment if one can accept it in this way is the main theme and question of the poem. Death could be seen as this pure, unblemished moment in which a person allows himself to become one with oblivion and death. The second poem in this poetic analysis will be Because I Could Not Stop for Death. At a fundamental level, the poem speaks of the stages of the narrator's life as Death drives her in his carriage to the grave. Death here is a gradual and slow process that takes time, but still inevitable. In the first stanza, we can see that the narrator has been leading a busy life, not even having time to die, so Death himself kindly stopped and offered her a ride. in his carriage. The second stanza shows us that there is no rush, and in the next stanzas the narrator and Death take a look at the narrator's life up to that point until arriving at a House that looked like a Swell in the Ground, symbolizing his place of final rest. , yet the narrator, knowing that centuries will pass from the moment she sets foot in the tomb, is not scared, because it will seem to her that only a day has flown by. Death in this poem is both personified and not. Death personified seems like something of a gentleman: he is patient, polite, friendly, and kindly offers her a ride. The narrator's reluctance to stop for death is actually more than superficial, as it symbolizes his fear of death, which begins to diminish with Death's arrival. She is now aware that there is no escape, and Death's respectful and kind treatment of her helps her move forward as they take a ride in his carriage. It is a nostalgic scenario that evokes in the reader the myth that once a person dies, they have a flashback of their life. The narrator sees his schoolyard, cornfields, and the setting sun, which symbolize his childhood, his adulthood, and his old age, respectively. Non-personified death is what the reader encounters in the last two stanzas. It is a grave that resembles a house, which could symbolize that once a person dies, their new home is actually their grave. Yet, for the narrator, the journey to that new home is long, apparently centuries long, even if in reality it lasts less than a day and she accepts it, because she is aware that there will be no turning back once she has accepted the invitation. travel in a carriage. The last poem that will be analyzed is I heard the buzz of a fly - when I died. The basic premise is that she thinks back to how she died while her loved ones, who were planning to take over her inheritance, surrounded her when suddenly a fly appeared in the room and disturbed the narrator's quiet passage with its buzzing and buzzing. its noise. the moment he hears the "hum" he dies. In the first stanza, we can see the narrator in the room calmly awaiting his death. Everything is calm: the air, the spectators, everything except the fly. As in Why I Couldn't Stop forDeath, the tones are calm, but here it is otherworldly, almost robotic. However, one may experience a certain feeling of annoyance while reading the poem, which is directly addressed to the fly buzzing around the room. The second verse is also set in the room, but this time addressed to the loved ones who surround the narrator: they were suffering, but now they are calming down even just by increasing the 'intensity' of the silence in the room because the 'Last onset' is approaching – his last breath is about to be inhaled and exhaled. The third and fourth stanzas serve to quickly introduce the reader. The narrator reveals her will when the fly suddenly appears and puts an end to her peaceful passage. The fly is described here in fragments, it is blue, uncertain and has a stumbling buzz. The fly's uncertainty is in direct contrast to the narrator's certainty that his death is approaching. This could also be seen in much deeper symbolism – the narrator is certain that the light is near and that his death will be peaceful, but the fly brings uncertainty with its stumbling buzz and the fact that it flies right between the narrator and the glimmer of light at the exact moment of the narrator's death, could symbolize that what comes next is actually uncertain. The fly can be seen as a symbol of death, but of a completely opposite type of death to that of the previous poem. Because I couldn't stop in front of death. Here, even though the narrator is aware that her demise is imminent and inevitable, she is still surprised and taken aback when it arrives, thus eliminating the possibility of a peaceful death. The same fly buzz could be interpreted as an approaching thunderstorm, a type of storm that usually arrives after a particularly nice spell of weather. In addition to this, flies are found on the corpses of recently deceased people. Like vultures, flies begin to gather around the person or animal near death, before finally feasting on their flesh and leaving larvae in the body after death. If this is taken into account, the loved ones surrounding the narrator are like flies: they wait for death to cry, but also to finally distribute the inheritance among themselves, just as the flies would distribute the corpse among themselves. poetry is the use of hyphens, which is an unusual symbol, not being a word, but a punctuation mark. It may mark the narrator's heavy breathing, as breathing becomes increasingly difficult as death approaches, but the narrator nevertheless remains calm and still, refusing to fret – until the fly arrives. Then the use of hyphens increases dramatically: in the first stanza there are four hyphens, the second stanza has five, the third only three, and then, with the emergence of the fly, the narrator begins to breathe faster and heavier and the number of dashes increases to seven. The poem also ends with a hyphen, perhaps symbolizing that the narrator did not expect to die there and had more things to say or even to enhance the idea that this is not the end of their existence, but it remains uncertain what will happen to them, for there are no more words after the hyphen and the poem ends. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom article from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay While reading Emily Dickinson's poetry, I noticed that she always questions things about her life, the biggest thing she questioned was death itself. Unfortunately, no one knows what awaits us after life, not even poets like Dickinson who try wholeheartedly to answer this question. Being mortal shows us that we always live at a crossroads, a double life that is never complete and a life that can easily be cut short. If life is..