-
Essay / The Roles of Death and Mortality in Because I Couldn't Stop to Die by Emily Dickinson
The Roles of Death and Mortality in 'Because I Couldn't Stop to Die die”Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"?Get the original essay "Because I Couldn't Stop to Die" by Emily Dickinson discusses two interrelated but distinct topics: death and mortality. The poet presents these topics as an interconnected phenomenon in order to support the poem's theme that death is an inevitable and natural facet of life that deserves to be accepted. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker and her companion, Death personified as a gentleman, are introduced (lines 1-4). Despite the circumstances surrounding the speaker's encounter with Death, we can infer from the speaker's diction that the speaker is not disarmed by the fact that she is dead (6-8). It is through this use of tone coupled with symbolism that the poem uses the topics of death and mortality to provide the basis for the poem's theme, that death is an inescapable part of life that must be embraced. The poet uses the speaker's tone to demystify the subject of death so that it plays a central role in supporting the theme of the poem. This is achieved through the poet's use of simplistic language and em dashes. The speaker has a simple vocabulary, devoid of the complexity of words that can contain multiple meanings depending on its particular context (the word "love" would be an example of a word containing multiple contextual meanings). The simplicity of the poem's language does not detract from the complexity of the treatment of the subjects of death and mortality in relation to the theme; instead, this reliance on simplistic phrasing enhances the visibility of the theme by depicting death, in particular, as an ordinary event that does not differ from other stages of life. This topic is specifically more affected by the poet's choice of words than its counterpart, as it is the primary concern of mortality. While mortality concerns the state of dying, death is an end in itself, freed from the cycle of contemplation linked to mortality. The poet's use of language to set the tone of the poem addresses the contemplation of mortality by removing fear from the act of dying and describing death as a natural event---essentially demystifying death. By stripping death of its otherness, the poet's use of em dashes in place of more formal punctuation (such as commas, semicolons, and periods) further forces readers to view death as a natural process of life. The incorporation of em dashes into the poem allows the poem to take on the appearance of a conversation, with the only pause existing at the end of the first stanza (4). Each use of the em dash emphasizes the line it follows ("At Recess---in the Ring---/ Wepass the Fields of Gazing Grain---" [10-11]), suggesting that, as the speaker recounts, on the day she met death, she remembered details she had previously forgotten. The use of em dashes gives the poem a more conversational and informal disposition, allowing the tone of the poem to contribute to the normalization of death. This treatment of death brings awareness to the theme of the poem by explaining to the audience why death is not worth fearing but embracing. Likewise, the poet uses symbolism to normalize the subject of mortality to reinforce the presence of the theme of the poem. As the carriage of death passes the school “where the children strove” (9), the “contemplative grain fields” (11) and the “setting sun”..