Emily’s View of the Soul
The afterlife is a mystery to all mankind, and everyone has their own theory as to what surmises after we die. Emily Dickson provides two different theories in her poems “If I Should Die” and “Because I Couldn’t Stop For Death.” In the first, she alludes to the sense that death is the extinction of a soul, but in the latter she sees the soul living on for eternity after the bodies physical death.
“If I Should Die” is a poem that eliminates the harshness of death but snaps the audience back to reality at the very end. Moreover, throughout the story death is still seen light-hearted with lines such as, “ When the Robins come/ Give the one in the Red Cravat,/ A Memorial crumb” (Lines 2-4). The harshness is provided when Emily discusses the extinction of the soul in the last stanza. She does not divulge any sign of the soul still existing after death in the poem. The body becomes lifeless after death, and cannot say thank you to the person that fulfills her dying wish. She also gives imagery to the cold dead body with the words …show more content…
Death acts like a gentleman and picks her up in a carriage, while she is doing her normal labors. Then once again reality sets in later in the poem when the woman realizes how cold death is and how much time has passed. “I first surmised the Horses Heads were toward Eternity,” describes how the soul travels in the car with immortality mocking her while she never reaches paradise (Lines, 23-24). This is why this poem evokes more emotion out of me than the other. I prefer to believe that the soul does live on after death. However, if the afterlife is similar to this version Emily has depicted, then I’m not sure I would want to exist anymore. Immortality sounds pleasant when you reach Heaven, but to travel to an endless destination for “centuries” seems worse than not existing at all (Line,
The afterlife is a mystery to all mankind, and everyone has their own theory as to what surmises after we die. Emily Dickson provides two different theories in her poems “If I Should Die” and “Because I Couldn’t Stop For Death.” In the first, she alludes to the sense that death is the extinction of a soul, but in the latter she sees the soul living on for eternity after the bodies physical death.
“If I Should Die” is a poem that eliminates the harshness of death but snaps the audience back to reality at the very end. Moreover, throughout the story death is still seen light-hearted with lines such as, “ When the Robins come/ Give the one in the Red Cravat,/ A Memorial crumb” (Lines 2-4). The harshness is provided when Emily discusses the extinction of the soul in the last stanza. She does not divulge any sign of the soul still existing after death in the poem. The body becomes lifeless after death, and cannot say thank you to the person that fulfills her dying wish. She also gives imagery to the cold dead body with the words …show more content…
Death acts like a gentleman and picks her up in a carriage, while she is doing her normal labors. Then once again reality sets in later in the poem when the woman realizes how cold death is and how much time has passed. “I first surmised the Horses Heads were toward Eternity,” describes how the soul travels in the car with immortality mocking her while she never reaches paradise (Lines, 23-24). This is why this poem evokes more emotion out of me than the other. I prefer to believe that the soul does live on after death. However, if the afterlife is similar to this version Emily has depicted, then I’m not sure I would want to exist anymore. Immortality sounds pleasant when you reach Heaven, but to travel to an endless destination for “centuries” seems worse than not existing at all (Line,