The Nature of Death in Emily Dickinsons Poems Essay

Emily Dickinson once said, â€Å"Dying is a wild night and a new road.† Some people welcome death with open arms while others cower in fear when confronted in the arms of death. Through the use of ambiguity, metaphors, personification and paradoxes Emily Dickinson still gives readers a sense of vagueness on how she feels about dying. Emily Dickinson inventively expresses the nature of death in the poems, â€Å"I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (280)†, â€Å"I Heard a fly Buzz—When I Died—(465)â€Å" and â€Å"Because I could not stop for Death—(712)†. Emily Dickinson, who achieved more fame after her death, is said to be one of the greatest American poets of all time. Dickinson communicated through letters and notes and according to Amy Paulson Herstek, author of†¦show more content†¦Dickinson’s poems provide that secret gateway to the supernatural that Ferlazzo is referring to. In the poem â€Å"I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,† Emily Dickinson uses symbolism to convey some sort of mental funeral that the speaker is experiencing. The funeral image that Dickinson depicts in the first line of the poem: â€Å"I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,† does not literally represent a funeral, but it is used to symbolism a mental breakdown and agony that the speaker is going through. By using this symbolism, the speaker is imagining the death of old ways of thought. Dickinson writes that when the funeral service was â€Å"like a Drum—â€Å" (Dickinson 43) and that it â€Å"Kept beating—beating—till I thought My Mind was going numb—â€Å" (43), leaving readers believing that the speaker is going mad. By depicting this image, Dickinson reveals that with the death of old thought; there is some sort of numbness or pain that is necessary to â€Å"progress to a better state† (Goldfarb 2). By repeating the beating sound two times , along with the rhyming sequence in the previous lines of the poem, Dickinson is stressing the numbness and the importance of it. Dickinson uses ambiguity to stress the difficulty of knowing and understanding certain experiences and thoughts to the reader. By being deliberately elusive, Dickinson makes the speaker out to be some sort of hero. In a critical essay of â€Å"I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,† Sheldon GoldfarbShow MoreRelatedEmily Dickinson: An American Poet1793 Words   |  7 PagesEmily Dickinson is one of the most influential American authors, whose works transformed the way people view poetry and female authors. Her exceedingly complex life has proved a tremendous influence on her instrumental poetry, creating its originality and distinguishing her from other great poets of the nineteenth century. As well, her use of symbolism and imagery has continued to make her work celebrated. 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