Interpretation of Death 1 An Interpretation by Death of Hamlet, a Raven, and a Gentleman David Sprague Introduction to Literature Andrea Pfaff February 9, 2009 Interpretation of Death 2 An Interpretation by Death of Hamlet, a Raven, and a Gentleman Drawing comparisons between different authors can highlight the human need to write about things that are dark, mysterious, and foreboding. In this essay a connection between specific works and the authors will be established to show that not only how they thought and transversed the human language were the same and idealized but some of their personal truths and conquests as well. There are not too many authors whom can say that they were more influential in their chosen profession than William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, and Edgar Allen Poe. None of them need any introduction for they are on the lips of everyone who has leafed through the pages of a book. When making a connection between William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the poems Because I could not stop for Death by Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven, death and mortality seem to be a repeating theme throughout. In Shakespeare’s play the main character Hamlet is constantly enthralled by the idea of death. He actually expresses how he wishes to die throughout most of the play and contemplates suicide over his father’s demise, his mother’s new marriage, and the frailty and disgust of mankind. In Emily Dickinson’s poem Because I could not stop for Death she contemplates death, mortality, and life after death. Since Dickinson was considered a recluse, rarely leaving her life-long home, the subject of death would perhaps be something only familiar to her in her own imagination. She wrote about it as a way to convey that death could not be stopped. “He kindly stopped for me” (Dickinson, 810) eludes that death is ever if anything inescapable. Interpretation of Death 3 Edgar Allen Poe also themed his poetic masterpiece, The Raven, on death and...