The overall meaning of Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death” revolves around the idea of death and how it is inevitable for everyone, but it may not be as awful as one would think. In her poem, she describes a woman’s journey to the afterlife, using both an eccentric tone and a first-person point of view, beginning with “Because I could not stop for Death” (1). Her purpose for writing this is to convince her audience that people should live everyday like it is their last and not take their lives for granted. She wants them to know that anything could happen, but one should not live in fear of it. She also uses a variety of literary devices and techniques that contribute to the effectiveness of her poem, such as: personification, anaphora, and imagery.
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For instance, she starts off with writing, “Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me”, capitalizing death to make a proper noun (1-2). Through these lines, she implies that Death was reasonable and nice enough to wait for her, because she was not ready to die. However, this is also ironic because death does not physically wait, but it is the other way around in real life. She then carries this personification throughout the poem, about how they “slowly drove, he knew no haste, and I had put away my labor, and my leisure too, for his civility.” to emphasize how Death had human characteristics and was not like what people would imagine him to be. In her point of view, Death is not a state of being, but rather a driver, that is taking a person to another place, presumably the afterlife. By personifying death, she downplays the process and creates more of a lighthearted mood, because she is not as fearful as one would be to face
For instance, she starts off with writing, “Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me”, capitalizing death to make a proper noun (1-2). Through these lines, she implies that Death was reasonable and nice enough to wait for her, because she was not ready to die. However, this is also ironic because death does not physically wait, but it is the other way around in real life. She then carries this personification throughout the poem, about how they “slowly drove, he knew no haste, and I had put away my labor, and my leisure too, for his civility.” to emphasize how Death had human characteristics and was not like what people would imagine him to be. In her point of view, Death is not a state of being, but rather a driver, that is taking a person to another place, presumably the afterlife. By personifying death, she downplays the process and creates more of a lighthearted mood, because she is not as fearful as one would be to face