There is no denying the sorrowful aspect of death. Whether it is that of someone close to our hearts or that of a complete stranger, death is a trying experience. The choice is ours; however, as to how we cope with death. Death is conventionally viewed as a negative process, yet it seems logical that until one watches another breathe his last breath firsthand, he cannot truly know how he feels about death. Oftentimes, in attempting to cope with the loss of a loved one, we learn that death is a beautiful thing—a metamorphosis into immortality lived out in a glorious heaven or a fiery hell.
In the poetry of Emily Dickinson, both an optimistic view of death and a more grim view of death are employed, perhaps reflecting the processewhich Dickinson herself dealt with the many deaths she faced from her youth. These contrasting positive and negative perspectives on death are especially exemplified by two of Dickinson’s poems, “If I Should Die” and “Because I Could Not Stop For Death,” which hypothetically explore her own death.
The first of the two, “If I Should Die” allows us to look into Dickinson’s thoughts that developed from living in isolation for so much of her life. Subject to solitude in her home, much of her visually perceived world was gathered from either the interior of the house or her view from behind a window. Due to her limited personal experience of the real world, and because an abundance of Dickinson’s free time was left for personal reflection, it is only natural that Dickinson came to truly know and understand herself as an individual, yet was left to wander almost blindly when considering her position among the larger world. Emily Dickinson beautifully expresses this personal position among that of the world as a whole in “If I Should Die,” through an ‘if’ statement:
“If I should die,
And you should live,
And time should gurgle on,
And morn should beam,
And noon should burn,
As it has usual done;” (Dickinson, 67).
In this particular section of the poem, Dickinson is implying that if she were to die, the world would go on as it always had—virtually unchanged by her absence. This is remarkably insightful for a woman of such limited worldly experience, yet it makes sense—Dickinson understands that what takes place on the other side of her household walls does not affect her, and thus will not be affected by neither her presence nor her absence. Dickinson goes on to state:
“’T is sweet to know that stocks will stand
When we with daisies lie,
That commerce will continue,
And trades as briskly fly.
It makes the parting tranquil
And keeps the soul serene,” (Dickinson, 67)
Ultimately implying that she is truly grateful for the world continuing to move on—unchanged—as it makes “the parting tranquil” and the “soul serene.” This is an interesting point to make, and thus why I have so enjoyed Dickinson’s perspective on death. Rather than preferring a sullen funeral in her honor, followed by mourning and tears shed, Dickinson wishes that the world will go on, paying little attention to her passing, and that this will consequently allow her to go in peace—a preference not shared by many others of the day in time. We often assume that people will mourn our deaths and that that which we leave behind as our world, respectively, will almost pause for a moment, as if it must recover and adjust to our being gone. After reading Dickinson’s poem, I no longer believe this to be true. Yes, if I were to die today, I hope that my friends and family would not simply dismiss my life; however, I would also hope that the world I left behind would continue as it had, and that I would be remembered rather than missed.
Dickinson explores a similar situation in her poem “Because I Could Not Stop For Death,” but the poem seems to have a darker overall connotation. Rather than simply ponder what may occur is she should die, Dickinson makes use of a metaphor, as death becomes not only a concept, but also an individual. In this poem, Death stops his carriage and Dickinson becomes his next passenger, thus beginning her own death, which she metaphorically expresses through the carriage ride experience with Death. Evident in the first quatrain, Dickinson has mentally embarked on a carriage journey with the characters of Death and Immortality, essentially considering the actual experience of dying and meeting Death—face to face. “Because I could not stop for Death / He kindly stopped for me / The carriage held but just ourselves / And Immortality.” Dickinson proceeds to detail the world passing by her carriage window—“the school where children played,” “the fields of gazing grain,” and “the setting sun—“ as if to imply that as one experiences death, he will see the world flash before his eyes one last time before his journey ends in either heaven or hell—whichever his fate. The reason this poem comes across as much grimmer than the first; however, is the way in which Dickinson emphasizes the eternity of death. In stating, “Since then ‘t is centuries; but each / Feels shorter than the day / I first surmised the horses’ heads / Were toward eternity,” Dickinson has instigated the idea that the longest day one experiences is his last one—the day in which one realizes that the horses leading Death’s carriage are headed for eternity. This is yet another interesting insight by Emily Dickinson, that the actual experience of dying can be compared to that of a leisurely carriage ride with death—a carriage ride in which one watches their last memories of the world pass by him from behind a window, before realizing that he is in fact headed toward his eternal and irreversible death.
It is through such unorthodox considerations of the experience of dealing with death that the intrigue brought about by Dickinson’s art arises. Emily Dickinson challenges our conventional ways of thinking, introducing new perspectives to ponder—an impressive skill for a woman who spent nearly her whole life in her house and only learned of the world from books and her window—yet logical since nearly all of her time was left to thinking and writing. “If I Should Die” and “Because I Could Not Stop For Death,” are left to be interpreted in, perhaps, many different ways, but Dickinson’s views of death are clearly unique, and cause any reader of her work to question how they themselves view death; therefore, a successful thinker and poet even as she was confined to her home and saw things in a completely different light than others of her time.
Dickinson, Emily. “If I Should Die.” The Complete Works of Emily Dickinson. Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1924. Bartleby.com: Great Books Online. 2000. 29 Nov. 2010 <http://www.bartleby.com/113/4067.html>.
