FREE ESSAY ON ONE POET TWO POEMS

ONE POET TWO POEMS

Two Poems. Two Ideas. One Author
Two of Emily Dickinson's poems, Because I Could Not Stop For Death 
and I Heard A Fly Buzz-When I Died, are both about one of life's few 
certainties: death. However, that is where the similarities end. 
Although both poems were created less than a year apart by the same 
poet, their ideas about what lies after death differ. In one, there 
appears to be life after death, but in the other there is nothing. Only 
a number of clues in each piece help us determine which poem believes in 
what.
In the piece, Because I Could Not Stop For Death, we are being told 
the tale of a woman who is being taken away by Death. This is our first 
indication that this poem believes in an afterlife. In most religions, 
where there is a grim reaper like specter, this entity will deliver a 
person's soul to another place, usually a heaven or a hell.
In the fifth stanza, Death and the woman pause before ...a House that 
seemed A Swelling of the Ground- The Roof was scarcely visible- The 
Cornice in the Ground- (913). Although the poem does not directly say 
it, it is highly probable that this grave is the woman's own. It is 
also possible the woman's body already rests beneath the soil in a 
casket. If this is at all accurate, then her spirit or soul may be the 
one who is looking at the house. Spirits and souls usually mean there 
is an afterlife involved.
It isn't until the sixth and final stanza where the audience obtains 
conclusive evidence that Because I Could Not Stop For Death believes 
in an afterlife. The woman recalls how it has been ...Centuries- and 
yet feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses' Heads were 
toward Eternity- (913). To the woman, it has been a few hundred years 
since Death visited her, but to her, it has felt like less than 24 
hours. Since the body cannot live on for hundreds of years, then it must 
be none other then the soul who has come to the realization that so much 
time has passed. The final part with the horses refers to the horse 
drawn carriage the woman was riding in when she passed away. In those 
two final lines, the horses seem to be leading her into Eternity, 
possibly into an afterlife.
It is just the exact opposite is Dickinson's other poem, I Heard A 
Fly Buzz-When I Died, With this particular piece of literature, the 
clues which point to the disbelief in an afterlife are fewer and not as 
blatant, but are all still present. In this poem, a woman is lying in 
bed with her family standing all around waiting for her eventual death.
While the family is waiting for her to pass on, she herself is waiting 
for ...the King... (914). No, we're not talking about Elvis, but 
instead this King is some sort of omnipotent being, a god. Later as the 
woman dies, her eyes (or windows as they are referred to in the poem) 
fail, then she ...could not see to see- (914). When she says this, 
what she seems to mean is she could not see any of the afterlife or 
Kings she expected to be there. The woman's soul drifted off into 
nothingness with no afterlife to travel to.
To conclude, the beliefs of the two Dickinson poems in regards to life 
after death differ significantly. In one, life does exist, in the other 
it does not. To determine which poem believes in what, one must dig 
through the clues in each.