One Poet Two Poems
Two Poems. Two Ideas. One Author Two of Emily Dickinson's poems, Because I
Could Not Stop For Death and I Heard A Fly Buzz-When I Died, are both about one
of life's few certainties: death. However, that is where the similarities end.
Although both poems were created less than a year apart by the same poet, their
ideas about what lies after death differ. In one, there appears to be life after
death, but in the other there is nothing. Only a number of clues in each piece
help us determine which poem believes in what. In the piece, Because I Could Not
Stop For Death, we are being told the tale of a woman who is being taken away by
Death. This is our first indication that this poem believes in an afterlife. In
most religions, where there is a grim reaper like specter, this entity will
deliver a person's soul to another place, usually a heaven or a hell. In the
fifth stanza, Death and the woman pause before ...a House that seemed A Swelling
of the Ground- The Roof was scarcely visible- The Cornice in the Ground- (913).
Although the poem does not directly say it, it is highly probable that this
grave is the woman's own. It is also possible the woman's body already rests
beneath the soil in a casket. If this is at all accurate, then her spirit or
soul may be the one who is looking at the house. Spirits and souls usually mean
there is an afterlife involved. It isn't until the sixth and final stanza where
the audience obtains conclusive evidence that Because I Could Not Stop For Death
believes in an afterlife.
The woman recalls how it has been ...Centuries- and
yet feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses' Heads were toward
Eternity- (913). To the woman, it has been a few hundred years since Death
visited her, but to her, it has felt like less than 24 hours. Since the body
cannot live on for hundreds of years, then it must be none other then the soul
who has come to the realization that so much time has passed. The final part
with the horses refers to the horse drawn carriage the woman was riding in when
she passed away. In those two final lines, the horses seem to be leading her
into Eternity, possibly into an afterlife. It is just the exact opposite is
Dickinson's other poem, I Heard A Fly Buzz-When I Died, With this particular
piece of literature, the clues which point to the disbelief in an afterlife are
fewer and not as blatant, but are all still present. In this poem, a woman is
lying in bed with her family standing all around waiting for her eventual death.
While the family is waiting for her to pass on, she herself is waiting for
...the King... (914). No, we're not talking about Elvis, but instead this King
is some sort of omnipotent being, a god. Later as the woman dies, her eyes (or
windows as they are referred to in the poem) fail, then she ...could not see to
see- (914). When she says this, what she seems to mean is she could not see any
of the afterlife or Kings she expected to be there. The woman's soul drifted off
into nothingness with no afterlife to travel to. To conclude, the beliefs of the
two Dickinson poems in regards to life after death differ significantly. In one,
life does exist, in the other it does not. To determine which poem believes in
what, one must dig through the clues in each.
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