Because I Could Not Stop for Death in English 2341 Spring 2015 Class

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May 08, 2015 Viviana L. rated it it was ok

While being in the class Forms of Literature, we the students had many readings that we had to be responsible for. We not only read dramas and fictions but poems and sonnets as well. To my understanding and from background knowledge from previous classes, I knew what a poem was. I had never heard of the word sonnet, until I came into college. From what I read my understanding is that a sonnet is a poem made up o fourteen lines that rhyme. A poem on the other hand is a creation of an arrangement While being in the class Forms of Literature, we the students had many readings that we had to be responsible for. We not only read dramas and fictions but poems and sonnets as well. To my understanding and from background knowledge from previous classes, I knew what a poem was. I had never heard of the word sonnet, until I came into college. From what I read my understanding is that a sonnet is a poem made up o fourteen lines that rhyme. A poem on the other hand is a creation of an arrangement of words. The poem “Because I could not stop for death”, by Emily Dickinson was a bit challenging for me to read and understand to the best of my abilities. I did have to go back and reread to fully comprehend what was going on. This poem is basically talking about a ride that a women takes with a gentleman, but apparently she is not on her way to her burial, she has been dead for quite some time already.
Emily Dickinson is a very well know famous poem writer. She usually speaks in first person in her poems, mostly always using the word “I”. In her poems she would mostly talk about what interested her and things she already knew about life. We can say that Dickinson was a person who was a very detailed observer, and that’s what she would include in her poems. Her poems were usually very short, but what was so important about them was that she was able to contrast her main idea with images. Another thing that was said about her poem was that they were very unpredictable. In the poem “Because I could not stop for Death” a woman and gentleman like I had mentioned in the intro take a slow ride to their death. “Immortality” is mentioned in the poem, we can compare this to the slow carriage ride. We know that it is a slow ride because it states, “We passed the school where children strove, we passed the fields of gazing grain, and we passed the setting sun, or rather be passed us”. At the end of the poem she is taken to her new home which is death waiting for her. It says, “We paused before the house that seemed a swelling of the ground; the roof was scarcely visible, the cornice but a mound”.
What I got from reading the poem “Because I could not stop for death” was that death awaits everyone in different ways, meaning that everyone approaches death differently. This woman who takes a carriage ride with a gentleman is reminiscing on her death. The carriage ride is slow and I believe that Dickinson mentions it like that in the poem for a reason. Another thing that came across my mind while reading the poem was that maybe the gentleman that is with her during the ride can somewhat be seen as God, and maybe death is destined to be with her for eternity.
Even though poems are short and very brief, they hold a very significant meaning behind them. Dickinson had a very complex way of writing, which made you think and question yourself more than one time. This poem was one of them like many other of her pieces of work.
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English 2341 Spring 2015 Class