Because I Could Not Stop For Death

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Reference to life after death - The carriage held Death and "Immortality"

Journey with death symbolic of the journey of life, passing the school, where childhood is spent, towards the setting sun.

The journey ends at the grave.

Red - Content

Blue - Symbolism

Green - Devices

Purple - Structure

Personification of Death - almost portrays Death as a gentleman - "kindly stopped for me".

Carriage symbolic of a hearse?

Perspective - the narrator, who is already dead, is looking back on their life and death.

Main themes are life and death, mortality and immortality

Metaphor - the house is a grave, the narrator's eternal domain.

Cornice as the gravestone.

Rhyme Scheme

First stanza ABCB

Fourth stanza ABCB - slant rhyme

Others irregular

Metre

Alternates regularly between iambic tetrametre and triametre - however some breaks in metre in fourth stanza and final line of fifth. - Very typical of Dickinson

Death and the narrator pass the "setting sun". Is the sun symbolic of life, now leaving the narrator in the darkness of death?

Semantic field of movement, journey

Repetition of "stop" - symbolic of the finality of death? However, this contrasts with the concept of immortality.

Slant rhyme - "Chill" + "Tulle"

Dashes in place of commas and full stops to connect and link stanzas while still denoting a pause in the flow of the poem

Parallel themes of mortality and immortality

Calm tone despite the subject matter, however almost romantic in regards to Death

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