In the poem “Because I could not stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson it refers to death as a gentlemen who visits Dickinson to take her on a journey “towards eternity”. This very ironic that she considers death as a gentleman because it is the total opposite. Dickinson’s poems deal with death again and again. In “Because I could not stop for Death,” we see death personified. He is not frightening or intimidating, but rather a friendly guide to eternity. The speaker feels no fear when Death picks her up in his carriage; she just sees it as an act of kindness, as she was too busy to find time for him.
It is emphasized in the first stanza that the carriage holds just the two of them. This leads the speaker to so easily give up on her life. On the second stanza they both start the slow and peaceful journey. “We slowly drove, he knew no haste” Dickinson here understands the seriousness of the situation in which she forgets about everything. “And I put away my labor and my leisure too, For his civility” She describes her struggle in life with the word “labor”, the word “leisure” as her freedom and deaths kindness as “civility” the third stanza narrates her story from her childhood as “children strove” this stanza shows the life is not so great as the slow carriage ride is contrasted with what she sees as they go. A school scene of children playing, which could be emotional, is instead only an example of the difficulty of life. This stanza talks and explains about how we all go through our life stages.
Immorality as the goal is hinted at in the beginning, where “Immortality” is the only other passenger of the carriage, but it is in the final stanza that we see that the speaker has obtained it. Time loses its meaning; hundreds of years is no different than a day. Because time is gone, the speaker comes to a moment of realization, that death was not just death, but immortality, for she “surmised the Horses’ Heads/Were toward...