Emily Dickinson's If I Should Die

Have you ever lost a loved one and realized life goes on with or without them? Many people wonder what happens after they die and hope to find peace with death. Emily Dickinson’s poem, “If I Should Die,” expresses how she feels about the world’s life after death. The poem depicts death as being peaceful and the world as disregardful. Dickinson uses various poetic devices including vivid imagery, alliteration, and repetition to emphasize her thoughts and feelings about dying. Dickinson began suffering from depression, anxiety, and agoraphobia at a very young age and lived the rest of her life with these mental illnesses. During her lifetime, she wrote many poems that expressed thoughts of death and sadness. However, throughout Emily Dickinson’s …show more content…
In the first and second lines of this poem, Emily creates a scenario of someone living and someone dying or in other words, it is “ ...a curious person’s perspective who is assuming what would happen if they were to die” (Moorhead, “Dickinson and Death” ). In lines three through six, Dickinson creates an image of time still going by, morn still radiating, and the sun still shining at noon as it does and will do until the end of time. Emily uses these comparisons because “ when the reader reads that time will go on after death…” and the other comparisons, “... they cannot disagree with the speaker because they knew that this fact is true” (Moorhead, “Dickinson and Death”). In lines seven and eight, Dickinson is describing how nature will still continue after a death as well. She creates a scene of birds and bees moving and living at the same fast paced life as humankind and also makes their lives just as important because the have purpose. This is significant because “giving the birds human characteristics shows that a bird’s life is just as equal to a human” (Moorhead,“Dickinson and Death”). This is significant because the poet is stressing that the lives of human beings are as special as the lives of animals (Moorhead, “Dickinson and Death” ). Dickinson uses real life examples in lines nine through fourteen to make the reader think about the reality of death, the world’s life after a death and its peacefulness. She reminds the reader in …show more content…
She used alliteration to “...support her idea that death should no longer be something one fears, and that it should be looked at positively because organisms dying is all a natural process in life” (Moorhead,“Dickinson and Death” ). When Emily used this poetic device in lines seven and eight, she used words that deal with nature. She did this because nature is thought to be serene and she wanted “to get across is that death is a natural part of life” (Moorhead, "Dickinson and Death"). In lines eleven and thirteen, Dickinson once again uses words associated with real life references to prove her opinion. This is significant because “She uses things in life that any reader can relate to and opinions that no reader could possibly argue with” and this makes her point even stronger. Dickinson uses alliteration one more time in this poem in line sixteen. She uses alliteration in this line because she is trying to really bring out a feeling of peace with death in the