It is known that Emily Dickinson had a natural fear and obsession for death and her contemplation of her death is reflected in her poem, Because I Could Not Stop for Death. In Dickinson's works, she personified death, the central theme of the poem. Instead of describing death as a place of being or a state of mind, she describes death as a person or spirit coming to retrieve her soul. This poem reflects her inner thoughts on her own death and the journey that she would undergo in order to reach eternity. Dickinson first said that death, so to say, stopped at her door to seize her. She then said that she journeyed with death and passed a school where children played in recess, passed the grazing grain, and the setting sun. Dickinson and death ten paused before a house that was described as being "a swelling of the ground-the roof was scarcely visible". Dickinson concluded her poem by saying that the centuries felt shorter than a day in eternity.
Dickinson's poem is a narrative, makes a statement, and raised a particular issue that many people choose to ignore-death. Dickinson made death a reality through her writing. She portrayed death as a process of living-which leads to the theme-that death is inevitable and is a natural process of existence. The poet is didactic and very expressive. One may choose to cite this when she describes her encounter with death. The poem is written in a style that was adopted by Dickinson. Dickinson used figurative language in her poem, as a tool to support her theme. With Dickinson making Death into a personage, she created a unique image straight away in the first stanza. The reader can picture a chivalrous gentleman who was coming to take an enchanting woman out in his carriage, but then the reader realized that immortality is in the carriage with them. The carriage was also another metaphor, comparing a ride in a carriage to the trip from life to the afterworld. She incorporated the metaphor to be used in the third and fourth stanzas when the discussion of the drain and grave came about. Grain can not see therefore cannot gaze, but one is supposed to realize that the grain represents Dickinson's middle age, and knowing Dickinson rarely left the house, this indicated the period of time when she watched what was going on around her rather than joining it. Dickinson described her grave as "...a house that seemed a swelling of the ground".
None of Emily Dickinson's poems were found with titles, therefore on can only place the first line as the titles in her works. That being the case, I still believe that the title of this poem, "Because I Could Not Stop for Death", indicates it's theme. Dickinson tells the reader indirectly that one cannot stop death , therefore showing the reader that death is inevitable and is in control of our lives thus becoming the controller of human time. Through the use of narration, tone and mood and figurative language Emily Dickinson has been able to convey the theme that death is the controller of human time and energy.
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