Preview

Compare and Contrast Themes of Death in Emily Dickinson’s ‘How Many Times These Low Feet Staggered’ and ‘the Only Ghost I Ever Saw’.

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
2208 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Compare and Contrast Themes of Death in Emily Dickinson’s ‘How Many Times These Low Feet Staggered’ and ‘the Only Ghost I Ever Saw’.
Emily Dickinson, as a poetic writer, composed most of her works with the theme of death, the entirety of which can be categorised into three different periods of writings; the earliest mainly contained the themes of death and immortality, personifying death and elegiac poems and lacked the intensity and urgency of her later poems or their fascination with the physical aspects of death (VAN DAESDONK 2007). Because of Dickinson’s immense fascination with this subject it is interesting to compare her pieces against each other to see how her view of death changed over the years of her writing.

‘The Only Ghost I ever saw’, written in 1857-62, is an example of the earlier period of Dickinson’s writing. There are many different interpretations of this piece, the most obvious one is that the poem centers on an individual who has encountered the spirit of a person and is shocked by the meeting. A deeper analysis shows the possibility of the poem being about how the persona, or Dickinson, is forced to reassess her loyalty or belief of Christianity through the encounter of a ghost. In contrast ‘How many times these low feet staggered’, written 1890, can be recognised to belong in her later period as its theme centres on the viewing of the corpse of a mundane housewife and the physical aspects of her death. The poem itself is in the first person persona and contains a grotesque dreary tone; and from the poem’s fascination with the corpse we can see Dickinson’s frustration and obsession with death.

Concerning the form and structure of ‘The Only Ghost I ever saw’, the piece is a ballad, one of the two main forms of narrative poetry, as the poem uses the traditional ballad metre, which is made up of rhyming quatrains of alternative four-stress and three-stress lines. It is written in Iambic metre which gives the poem a soft flowing, lilting rhythm, this along with the many pauses throughout the poem cause the pace to become slow and smooth, much like the movement of the



Bibliography: VAN DAESDONK H. 2007 Emily Dickinson Notes Teignmouth College, unpublished Dickinson, E

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Emily Dickinson is unquestionably one of the most significant, innovative, and renowned American poets. She did not always receive such high praise, however, as most of her fame and honor was obtained long after she died. While she was alive, she lived most of her life isolated from society as a recluse. During this reclusion, however, she wrote almost eighteen hundred poems, and one of these included “Because I could not stop for Death” (Mays 1187). This is one of her most popular poems and that is in part because it allows the audience to analyze the topic of death and the struggle to come to grip with one’s own demise. The concept of Death is humanized within this poem. “He” is portrayed as a groom and a conductor, as much as he is a robber…

    • 1217 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Death is an odd thing, humans do not know what waits for them the moment their hearts stop beating, they do not know where they’ll end up going- but death is a common topic. Whether it be in movies or writing, death has made its impression on the world; especially on poet Emily Dickinson. Dickinson’s poems, “I heard a Fly buzz- when I died” and “Because I could not stop for Death” focus on a consistent theme of death and her own curiosity on what it might be like to die herself. Dickinson’s life and use of the archetypal device have a connection to helping fuel her dreary, death revolving, poetry.…

    • 511 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Death is a constant presence in life that can not be escaped and is experienced by everyone. Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night” and Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death” and both deal with different perspectives of death. Thomas’s poem looks at death from an external perspective of watching a person die where Dickinson’s poem looks at death through the perspective of a person experiencing death. These perspectives on death show the acceptance of death and eternity and death and disparity of life ending.…

    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Michael Salvucci Mrs. Comeau English 10 Honors Death, Pain, and the Pursuit of Peace Although Emily Dickinson’s poetry is profoundly insightful, her poems have a very confinedpan of subjects and themes. Most likely due to her early life and social reclusion, Dickinson’s poetry is limited to three major subjects: death, pain, and on a somewhat lighter note, nature. Dickinson’s poetry is greatly influenced by her early life as she led an extremely secluded and pessimisticlife. In her early adult years the poet spent one year studying at female seminary, from 1847 to 1848. Dickinson’s blunt pessimistic attitude is shown in a letter, written to a friend, as she says “I am not happy…Christ is calling everyone here, all my companions have answered, and I am standing alone in rebellion.” (Meltzer 20-21) The poets self-described rebellious manner can be acclaimed to her residence featuring many politically active and dominant men, as her brother, father and grandfather were all attorneys with interest in politics. Again in a letter to a friend written during a political convention, Dickinson wonders “why can’t [she] be a delegate in the convention?” as she says “[she] knows all about the tariff and the law.” (Sewall 64-65) She recognizes the gender barrier in society and as a result Dickinson develops a unique style of poetry. Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality. (Lines 1-4) The speaker’s use of the word ‘kindly’ to describe death exemplifies his civil and considerate manner, but is his courteous character an illusion? Later in the poem the speaker writes: We slowly drove, he knew no haste, And I had put away My labor, and my leisure too, For his civility. (4-8) Because of death’s kindness in stopping for the speaker, she “put[s] away / [her] labor, and [her] leisure too,” (5-6), is death being true in taking her to heaven, or is he betraying her? There interposed a fly (9-12)…

    • 978 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Emily Dickinson, a chief figure in American literature, wrote hundreds of poems in her lifetime using unusual syntax and form. Several if not all her poems revolved around themes of nature, illness, love, and death. Dickinson’s poem, Because I could not stop for Death, a lyric with a jarring volta conflates several themes with an air of ambiguity leaving multiple interpretations open for analysis. Whether death is a lover and immortality their chaperone, a deceiver and seducer of the speaker to lead her to demise, or a timely truth of life, literary devices such as syntax, selection of detail, and diction throughout the poem support and enable these different understandings to stand alone.…

    • 113 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Emily Dickinson had a sad life full with tragic experiences and its influences on her poetry can be seen in most of her works. During her life, she struggled with traumatic effects of a succession of deaths and due to this situation she spend the later half of her years in grief. The tragic deaths of people close to Dickinson have affected her writing and style of expression, in which death became a persisting theme of her poetry. Even though most of her poems consist directly on the subject "death", she also used unusual ways to write about this theme, by writing about immortality as a state of consciousness in an everlasting present. A typical example can be seen in her poems "Because I could not stop for Death", "I heard a Fly buzz when I died" and "I died for Beauty but was scarce".…

    • 2166 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Dickinson's personifies Death as an inescapable conqueror, hovering above and around us. The personification also effectively conveys the unexpected nature of death and the subjectivity of humans to its timetable. There is no gradual lead up to the poem's main idea; it is made apparent in the first two lines, "Because I could not stop for Death--/He kindly stopped for me"(1,2) The use of capitalization for Death (a device Dickinson uses throughout the poem to add to tone and emphasize words that are strong in meaning) gives further power to the personification. The attribution of physical properties to an intangible concept impresses upon the reader a haunting picture of death's inevitability. And, while Dickinson does not present death in a traditional skull and crossbones manner, the chivalrous courter, who is…

    • 1138 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Dickinson and Her Religion

    • 1078 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Dickinson's Christian education affected her profoundly, and her desire for a human intuitive faith motivates and enlivens her poetry. Yet what she has faith in tends to be left undefined because she assumes that it is unknowable. There are many unknown subjects in her poetry among them: Death and the afterlife, God, nature, artistic and poetic inspiration, one's own mind, and other human beings.…

    • 1078 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Emily Dickinson was a 19th century poet from Massachusetts who did not become famous until decades after her death. Looking back at her poetry, she was especially infatuated with death and religion. It would make perfect sense then that her poetry was influenced greatly by her own feelings of depression and loneliness. Emily Dickinson’s work is unique because of the poetic devices she uses, like irony, symbolism, connotation, imagery, and personification, and the recurring themes of death, religion, and nature. The following poems are related because they all share Dickinson’s common literary devices and themes.…

    • 1251 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Emily Dickinson's poetry can be seen as a study of deep fears and emotions, specifically in her exploration of death. In her famous poem #465 Dickinson explores the possibility of a life without the elaborate, finished ending that her religious upbringing promised her. She forces herself to question whether there is a possibility of death being a mundane nothingness. In this last moment of doubt in the appearance of the divine, the speaker in the poem find an independent and personal acceptance of a death without profundity or salvation.…

    • 1539 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The poem “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson is an extended metaphor on death, comparing it to a journey with a polite gentleman in a carriage taking the speaker on a ride to eternity. Through unusual symbolism, personification and ironic metaphors Dickinson subjugates that death is an elusive yet subtle being. Dickinson portrays death as an optimistic endeavor while most people have a gruesome perspective of death. This poem’s setting mirrors the circumstances by which death approaches, and death seems kind and compassionate.…

    • 1281 Words
    • 37 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Emily Dickinson Diction

    • 429 Words
    • 2 Pages

    There is a multitude of poems written with the theme of death, be it in a positive light or negative. Some poets write poems that depict Death as a spine-chilling inevitable end, others hold respect for this natural occurrence. In Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death”, diction and personification is utilized to demonstrate the speaker’s cordial friendship with Death.…

    • 429 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Emily Dickinson

    • 3794 Words
    • 16 Pages

    making rendezvous with her own soul. Later her introversion by and by led her to mystical experience called union with the soul or the divine. Her mystical experience enabled her to redefine everything in line with her spiritual thinking; and she wrote several poems under the intoxication of her spiritual thinking. A close reading of Dickinson‘s poems indicates that the best of her poems revolve round the theme of death. Being a mystic she believes in the deathlessness of death. In fact if death is to be assigned any position in her world then it will be second only to God. Death is a free agent; it is evergreen and all powerful. All the man-made creations perish with the…

    • 3794 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Emily Dickinson is regarded as one of the greatest American female poets. Although Emily Dickinson wrote about death in many of her works, she often times wrote about it in peculiar ways such as death as being eternal and continuous but also immortality as a state of consciousness can be seen in her poem, "Because I could not stop for Death-“.…

    • 551 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the poems of Dickinson “Because I could not stop for Death”, Housman “To an Athlete Dying Young, and Thomas “Do not go gentle into that good night” were written in different time period or era, it also seemed to refer to perceptions death; however, these poems could be referring as life experiences. Dickinson in her poem it seemed to have a connection with death the afterlife, Housman expressed acceptance towards, and in Thomas’s poem the author seemed to express desired to be alive and to fight death.…

    • 449 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics