Emily Dickinson Literary Devices

1.) This poem by Emily Dickinson describes the scene and atmosphere when someone is dying. The speaker’s final moments of life are portrayed as somber and quiet, so quiet that the speaker can evidently hear a “fly buzz,” which is a type of onomatopoeia and helps to emphasize the silence of the room. Another figurative devise that is employed to further establish the overwhelming silence is the use of a simile when comparing the stillness between the “heaves of storm” which would be relatively silent compared to the raging storm. The author also uses synecdoche to suggest that this person is not dying without care, there were evidently mourning in the room who eyes were “wrung dry” who are gathering for the speaker’s last breath. The speaker …show more content…
Throughout the poem, there is an overwhelming sensation of death, and this is achieved through symbolic detail like by having death take on the character of a man. This “man” is portrayed as a nice guy that holds the door open for his date and offers her his coat when it get cold, but is actually an extended metaphor to examine what real death might be like. It is also fair to conclude that the death of the speaker was slow, for Death drove slowly, and relatively painless, for Death was describe as quite courteous. Another symbol used is the carriage, which represents the final passage to death, and holds "Immortality," which is another example of personification. A third symbol that is used is the house, which speaker's last stop and final resting place, also known as her grave. Dickinson enforces the idea that the speaker accepts dying and is relatively comfortable with it. Throughout the poem there is also the use of anaphora, especially in “we” and “we passed.” This repetition is used to emphasize that the speaker is indeed in the hands of death, and for the rest of eternity, whatever she does, death will too. It signifies how intertwined the speaker no is with