Lisette Cuevas

English 495ESM

February 18, 2013

Emily Dickinson on The Season’s of Life

                “Because I Could Not Stop For Death” by Emily Dickinson is my favorite work of poetry to analyze.  It is unconventionally structured, uses metaphors, irony, imagery and imitative form to tell the story of life, the journey to death, and the speaker’s apparently calm acceptance of it.   It is as if every time I dissect it, there is something new to discover.  Presented in a lovely ballad form, it is comprised of six stanzas that follow a consistent pattern of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter.   The physical structure of the poem appears to be unusual because of the writer’s use of dashes; odd punctuation and inconsistent capitalization, there are many conventions at work. This poem does not follow a rhyme scheme, but there is a subtle use of alliteration and there is a very noticeable rhythm that mimics the sound of horses’ hooves hitting the ground, presumably the horses leading the carriage the speaker is riding in.

In the first stanza, Death is quickly personified as a thoughtful and familiar gentleman that stops to pick up and accompany our speaker on an assumed journey - “He kindly stopped for me” (2).  The tone of the stanza is almost romantic and the speaker seems to be in good spirits.  The speaker continues by describing the vehicle in which she is being whisked away, and mentions a fellow passenger “The Carriage held but just Ourselves/ And Immortality” (3/4).  Her tone is reassuring, relaxed and almost witty.  The dashes are left to the end of each line, providing no obstructions or apprehension and adding a slight amount of speed to the each verse.

In the second stanza, the irony continues as she writes “We slowly drove, he knew no haste” (5) suggesting a pleasant and unhurried drive.  The speaker describes ceasing her labor and leisure (6/7) for death, yet shows no resentment for having to stop her livelihood; instead she appears accommodating to death’s graciousness. 

Stanza three is rich with metaphors, imagery and holds some of the most important elements of Ms. Dickinson’s poem.  The speaker describes the passing landscape as she continues on her carriage ride.  She describes children at play in a schoolyard (9/10), Fields of Gazing Grain (11), and the Setting Sun (12).  These images symbolize the three stages of life:  Children at play to the beginning of life (9/10).  “Fields of Grazing Grain” represent youth to adulthood, or the middle stage of life (11). And “the Setting Sun” is likened to the final stage of life (12).  These images seem to impact the speaker and her initial enthusiasm begins to fade.   The presence of dashes mid-line in this stanza no longer seem to describe the pace of the carriage ride, but perhaps her hesitation as these images begin to register, and reality sets in.  This stanza is also set apart by Ms. Dickinson’s use of anaphora in the recurrence of the words “We passed” (lines 9, 11, 12) and alliteration “Recess . . . Ring”, “Gazing Grain” and “Setting Sun” (lines 10, 11, 12).

The fourth stanza begins with a line that we might think should have been part of the previous stanza.  The sun is now gone, and the speaker begins to feel cold “The Dews drew quivering and chill” (14).  As Ernest Sandeen notes “She uses images of cold, snow, frost and ice in contexts that reveal her antipathy”(485).  She determines that her “Gossamer Gown and Tulle Tippet” (15/16) provide no warmth as they are worn for adornment. The reader is left to wonder if the speaker was dressed in a “wedding gown” symbolizing her preparation for a new beginning with this suitor called Death.  Aside from the imagery in this stanza, the structure has a very sudden change that may give us added insight beyond what the words provide.  This stanza is distinct in its abrupt change in rhythm.  Ms. Dickinson switches up the structure on us from an 8-6-8-6 syllabic verse, to a 6-8-8-6 syllabic verse.  This solidifies the theory that perhaps our speaker has had a change of heart on her journey or that she has come to the realization that this is not an idyllic journey but a betrayal by her “kind” companion.

The cold continues in stanza five which confirms Sandeen’s theory that “winter is the realm of antibeing” (485).  “We passed before a House that seemed/ A Swelling of the Ground –“(17/18), a very literal description of a mound of dirt in front of a tombstone.  She describes a “Cornice – in the Ground” (20) as if she is viewing her own grave from above.  Though she seems accepting of this new home, there is a very noticeable lack of liveliness as in the earlier stanzas.  Her “antibeing” is the focal point here.  It appears that cold, winter-like stage of the poem brings with it “death instead of life, stasis and paralysis instead of movement, monochromatic dullness instead of color, depression of spirit instead of ecstasy” (Sandeen 485).

The final stanza places the speaker “centuries” past her journey, giving the impression that the speaker has been speaking of a past event throughout the poem.  The concrete imagery of the first five stanzas is visibly absent in this final stanza.  The language becomes abstract and the tone feels resigned.  The poem closes where it begins “Were toward Eternity” (24) which ties in perfectly with the first stanza and reveals a rhyme pattern with its final line “And Immortality” (4).

“Because I Could Not Stop for Death” is a brilliant work of poetry that makes use of every piece of it to convey its message.  The carefully plotted metaphors, the vivid imagery, its ironic tone all contribute to the story.  However, the poem’s structure is critical to revealing the heart of the speaker. The use of strategically placed dashes sets the cadence in each stanza, varying between unobstructed lines that are swift and fluid in the beginning, to apprehensive stanzas that reveal trepidation and sorrow as the poem progresses.  In stanza four we are handed a “REVERSE” card as in the game of UNO.  The stanza’s syllabic verse is ingeniously reversed and the change in the speaker’s tone is evidently changed.  The speaker’s tone has now gone from blissful, to introspective to listless.  Despite all the clues Ms. Dickinson gives us with every bit of this work, we are left to wonder whether this is the story of a woman’s welcoming and compliant attitude toward the end of her life or that of a woman who was seduced and bitterly deceived by Death.

Works Cited

Sandeen, Ernest. "Delight Deterred by Retrospect: Emily Dickinson's Late-Summer Poems.

     " The New England Quarterly 40.4 (1967): 483-500. Print.

Smith, Philip. 100 Best-loved Poems. New York: Dover Publications, 1995. Print.