immoratlity

Because I could not stop for Death- Emily Dickinson

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

Or rather, he passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

In “Because I could not stop for Death,” Emily Dickinson explores the human relationship with death, asserting that, while humans often do not realize how much control death has over them, death ultimately takes everyone and in death humans are able to find an immortality that is impossible in life.

As the poem begins, the speaker displays the perception that death has no control over her. She “could not” stop to accommodate death, indicating that she was above death and could choose whether or not to stop for death. However, her perceptions are quickly proved to be no more than fantasy as, regardless of the speaker’s perceived inability, death stops to take her. From that point on, death is able to completely control the speaker. While the speaker “could not stop,” as if too frantic and worried about life to consider death, death knows “no haste,” displaying death’s ability to force the narrator to slow down. In reaction, the speaker gives up both her “labor” and her “leisure,” work and play, the two main halves of human life, and in doing so symbolically surrenders her life to death.

However, death does not simply control the speaker as a single person. Rather, death is able to control all humans from the moment of birth. This point is emphasized in the “children” that the carriage passes. The narrator specifically emphasizes that it is not the two of them passing, but rather death that “passed us.” This phrase implies choice, suggesting that death made the decision to pass the children with his carriage and not take them as well, and in doing so was allowing them more life. However, the fact that death chose to leave the children also suggests that death always has the power to choose meaning that, regardless of whether or not a human is actually taken by death, all humans are always under the control of death. Death can occur at any time, even as a child.

Ultimately, the speaker finds, everyone dies, even if the person “could not stop for death” and did not have the time. The speaker and death reach a “house that seemed a swelling of the ground,” bringing to mind a grave which, when open, is nothing more than a hole in the ground surrounded by a mound of dirt that swells out of the ground. This imagery of a grave continues as the speaker notes that the “cornice [is] but a mound.” So the speaker finally comes to her grave, controlled by the death that controls all humans, but the speaker does not view this end as a negative development rather, throughout the poem, the speaker suggests that, in death, she is coming home. The speaker “put away” her leisure and labor, suggesting a willingness to give up her life. Dickinson even uses the words “kindly” and “civility” in describing death, portraying death as gentle and welcoming as opposed to unwanted. Death itself is portrayed as a home, as the grave that symbolizes it is seen as a “house,” a place for living. Death becomes a second life where the speaker and humans can find the “eternity” of immortality that is impossible in life before death, the “immortality” that the speaker only encounters for the first time in death’s carriage.