A Kind Death

A Kind Death

“Because I could not stop for death” by Emily Dickinson is one of the many poems that she has wrote in her lifetime. This poem however is a fixed form piece written in iambic pentameter alternating with iambic trimeter. The poem is written in six quatrains at four lines a piece. She also uses a ABCB rhyme scheme. We must remember that Dickinson is not dead but the speaker of this poem is. The poem is about death as it is implied in the title but this poem is not dark like some death poems. Dickinson uses many examples of alliteration, imagery, and it only starts out with the ABCB rhyme scheme in “Because I could not stop for death”.

The first stanza of the poem contains examples of personification and imagery. The first two lines of them poem start out “Because I could not stop for death- /He kindly stopped for me.” As my understanding when has death ever been kind to anyone? I also see her as busy person because of these two lines. She was so busy that someone had to stop her for her death. Then the next two lines talk about a Carriage so we see in our head a carriage or could it be a hearse with only the body and the driver?

Due to her use of words about death- kind, and in stanza two “He knew no haste” and “For His Civility” perhaps she believes death is not cruel and we start to think that way also. Dickinson using the word Civility in her poem can really throw someone off when we are talking about death and now most of us probably have a different view on dying can it be civil instead of frightening. “We slowly drove- He knew no haste” probably meant they were driving to the cemetery after her funeral very slowly as they usually do. “And I had put away/ My labor and my leisure too,/ For his Civility” means that because death was so kind to her she stopped her busy life to go with him.

In stanza three it seems as if she is looking back on her life “We passes the School, where Children strove/ At Recess- in the Ring-” Recess and the Ring are an example of alliteration she has used. Could the word ring be considered Ring around the Rosy which children played a lot back in the day? The words Grazing Grain and Setting Sun are examples of metaphors and also alliteration. “We passed the Fields of Grazing Grain-/ We passed the Setting Sun-” are metaphors relating to the death. As we can see from her use of imagery she is still busy as she is in the afterlife admiring her surroundings on the way to the cemetery.

In the fourth stanza she uses the words Gossamer, Gown, Tippet, and Tulle. These words are examples of alliteration again. In this stanza she is talking about her gown and the gossamer which is the thin layer on the gown along with the tippet or cape.