What Is Personification In Because I Could Not Stop For Death

When a person reads a piece of work with the word “Death” in the title, most would automatically assume that the story is going to be about something dark, scary, and lifeless. That is not the case for all pieces of work. This poem does show death in a dark and maybe even scary way; however, death is not lifeless. In the poem, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” the author brings Death to life. Dickinson uses personification in her poem to show readers an in-depth view of death. Death is in the form of a gentleman who picks up the speaker and takes her for a ride in a carriage. Most would assume that the reader would be scared to be in the same carriage as Death, but that is not the case. The speaker is actually very calm and they go about the ride in a calm and peaceful manner. However, they pass many sightings and end up in a not-so-peaceful place. In the first stanza, the reader is introduced to the speaker and Death. To get a better understanding of the poem, it would be best if the reader looked at it a few lines at a time: “Because I could not stop for Death/He kindly stopped for me” (Dickinson 1-2). The author says that “She could not stop for Death” meaning that the speaker did not have a choice about when she was going to die. Here, Dickinson shows us that we really do not have a choice when we will die. The …show more content…
“We slowly drove/He knew no haste” (Dickinson 5-6). These two lines show that they are in no rush to get to where they are going. The transition from “We” to “He” tells a lot in this single line. “We” might be used to show that the speaker has some sort of control of how fast they are going, but then the author quickly reminds us that “He” is the one that determines the actual pace of the journey. The next three lines of this stanza, “And I had put away/My labor and my leisure too/For his Civility” (Dickinson 7-9), show that the speaker has actually given up her free time for