Introduction
Emily Dickinson, the poet, demonstrated a unique style in poetry. Unlike most of the poets of her time, she explored and wrote poems based on her feelings. Through the works of her several poems, she expressed her free thoughts based on societal events that surrounded her life. Her loneliness and isolation from the outside world from her childhood made her express feelings of pain. In a rather uniqueness of art, the set of poems she had presented a vast array of representation with no titles. Often most poems have titles, but for Emily Dickinson's works were rear. Being an influential poet, her poems, her life, and surrounding had been widely analyzed. Many editors were interested in reconstructing her poems and gave them titles. Franklin's Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson is one of the most recent and comprehensive editions of Dickinson's poems. The comfort that Dickinson expressed with death is a clear depiction of desire to depart from this world, given her recluse and painful life.
The Life of Emily Dickinson
Born in 1830, Emily Dickinson was a lyric poet who spent most of her life in seclusion despite exhibiting exceptional brilliance in poetry. Considered one of the most prominent American poets in the 19th century, Dickinson wrote most of her poems on fascicles and envelopes and paid little attention to rules of grammar and versification despite being exceptionally bold and original. Only 10 of her poems were published throughout her lifetime in spite of the fact that she actually wrote about 1800 poems (Eberwein 261).
Even though she exhibited remarkable knowledge about the world around her, she spent most of her life behind locked doors with seldom visitations. Various behaviors exhibit her as a recluse. Dickinson spent about two decades of her life within her parents’ property without getting out of the compound, addressed visitors through doors, and even listened to her fathers’ funeral through a window (Eberwein 261). Many literature researchers tend to link her lonely and reclusive life to mental disorders and social anxieties. Others relate it to her overprotective parents.
Concept of Death as Portrayed by Emily Dickinson
Perhaps, her life could explain her positivism and masterly poetry towards death. The intimations of death are evident in most of her plays, if not all. Normally, topics on death, and death itself, trigger fear and absurd curiosity, making it a misery that nobody likes. Although it is known that death is inevitable, it is a fact that it is an experience that any normal human being would strive to avoid and curse. Most people perceive it as an undesirable occurrence which snatches away loved ones.
For Dickinson, death might be an evil thing but is an opportunity for human beings to save themselves from the pangs, sufferings, pains, and travails of this life. As commentators for Emily Dickinson’s poems note, Dickinson was eternally preoccupied with death and found pleasure in exploring its constructs (Eberwein 263). Overcoming the natural fear of death, she sees death as kind and offering opportunities for redemption. In some poems, she specifically explored death as an opportunity to attain life. This paradoxical argument is eminent in most of her poems, especially Because I could not stop for Death, which she wrote in 1862 and got published in 1890.
In the poem, Dickinson explores the inevitable nature of death and the uncertainties that occur upon death. She personifies death and sees it as not frightening but rather a gentle and a kind guider leading her to eternity. She wrote in the first stanza (Dickinson):
Because I could not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for me
The Carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality
The first few lines show that death is an inescapable occurrence, sometimes natural and strange, but a ‘gentleman’ who is kind enough to stop and allow a person to climb ‘his’ chariot into eternity. As Miller argued, the narrator's perception of death, as kind enough to stop for her, is a sign that Dickinson accepts death, although she is suspicious and uncertain of what happens upon death (235). The mention of the word ‘immortality’ raises a fundamental humanity question, ‘what happens upon death?’ However, the response to this question remains ambiguous throughout the poem. A closer look into the six-stanza poem raises further questions about life in general and Dickinson’s recluse life. For instance, “can death really be kind? Can death really be friendly and enlightening as Dickinson puts it? Might it be possible that she used the term ‘Death’ to signify a suitor who took her out on a chariot?
Christine Miller convinced that Because I could not stop for Death was the strongest poem to reflect Dickinson’s convictions about death and her personal desire for death to ‘come and take her.’ Miller notes that Dickinson had chronic optical weakness in addition to her modesty and instability of her family's social and political life, which might have shaped her positivism towards death (249). Scenarios and experiences which inflict suffering and pain are known as the killers on the human desire of life and alters their perception about life and death. By comparing a life marked with unending episodes of suffering and pain and death as a kind reliever of human agony, a person whose life is marked with extreme seclusion, pain, and suffering, like in the case of Dickinson, might perceive death as a lovely option. This argument clarifies Miller's perception of Dickinson and her inclination towards death.
Contrarily, Eberwein shows that the poem does not directly mirror Dickinson's desire for death but recorded her encounter with the fact that death is inevitable and the what happens in the afterlife is mystical and indistinct (Eberwein 264). It represents her preoccupations with death and immortality as objective facts, nothing more. However, this perception can as well be put to question. Why did her preoccupations about death as were presented in the poem so unique and inconsistent with public views? Supposing that her recluse life was somewhat a contributor to her preoccupations, the poem reflects her life through death and into the afterlife. In this perspective, the mortal body is just a chariot that leads people into inescapable destiny; death and immortality. This is evident is the third stanza:
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –
The word ‘pass’ is mentioned three times in this stanza to emphasize on the passing time of human beings towards eternity. From the time humans are born to the time of their death, that time is described as passing. And even after death, some believe that people pass to eternity. The moment she passes the ‘setting sun’ which signifies death, time ceases to exist. In essence, she excels in presenting life as a journey from birth to death. Dickinson might have lost the sense of time while still alive making her life indifferent from death. In recluse, time must have lost its meaning. Days and years made no meaning to her.
From the first stanza, the chariot held only the two of them, death and her, “The carriage held but just ourselves.” This poem shows the narrator giving up on life and embracing death in totality, giving up labor and her leisure. This might point out that Dickinson could have embraced death even before her actual time arrived (Miller 237). In her solitude, she had given up all that appertains life and began to perceive grave as home as evident in the fifth stanza, “we paused before a house that seemed a swelling of the ground; the roof was scarcely visible; the Cornice in the ground.” By using the word 'eternity' in her last line, she comes to the realization that death was an opportunity to immortality transforming life into the infinite (Miller 242).
There are numerous poems in which Dickinson exhibits positivism towards death. For instance, in "Color- Caste-Denomination," she sees death as an equalizer and personifies it as a democrat who is non-discriminative to both men and women. The same is also evident in "Not any higher stands the Grave," in which she exemplifies the inevitability of death to the young and old, rich and poor. In “Death is the Supple Suitor,” she personifies death as a male lover who skillfully woos a lady.
Conclusion
In a Nutshell, death was a major problem for Dickinson that she strove throughout her life to demystify. From this analysis, it is evident that Emily Dickinson’s preoccupation with death was unique relative to public perceptions. Additionally, there are evidence that her positivism towards death was a reciprocal of the life she lived and the experienced she had with his family and the people around her. Unlike the normal perception of death as something that ought to be feared, there are numerous instances where Dickinson exhibits her positivism towards it personifying it as a skilled lover, a savior, and a kind guider to eternity in various poems. Her perceptions of death were linked to her loneliness, isolation, and feelings of pain.
