Personification Of Death

Many people refuse to accept the fact that they are near the point of passing on. They want to remain in the present world because they’re afraid of death. However, they fail to realize that the point after death, is the rebirth into a new life. While putting aside her daily work and entering a carriage ride, a girl realizes that death is nothing to be looked down upon, but to be appreciative of. In Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death”, the speaker utilizes personification, capitalization, and punctuation to illuminate the meaning of her passing to the eternal afterlife. In the poem, Death isn’t frightening or an intimidating reaper looking to take the souls of people. It is rather a gentle guide helping to assist the speaker in leading her towards eternity. Death exemplifies civility in taking time to wait for the speaker, since she “could not stop for Death”. He waited until she was able to accept the fact that her life was coming to an end, to where she was no longer busy with her daily pursuit. “And I had put away / My labor and my leisure too,” (lines 6 and 7). Through persuasion and civility, she took a carriage ride with Death. During this carriage ride, they pause at a house that is swelling from the ground. Symbolically, this is her grave which serves only as her resting place while her and …show more content…
Death is capitalized to portray the image of him being an actual human, rather than a state of one’s being. Dickinson’s excessive use of dashes is to depict great stress and intense emotion, as the indication of a mental breakdown. Punctuation was used to disrupt conventional linguistic relations in an attempt to vivify her language. The dashes that are found throughout the poem could also have the symbolic meaning of the line never really ending. This can relate to the speaker going through her acceptance of living this newfound, immortal