Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Compare and contrast essay on two poems of Emily Dickinson.The poems are "Because I could not stop for Death" and "I heard a fly buzz when I...

In accord with the first post, there is a clear difference in tone between the two poems.  For one thing, the introduction of the fly suggests Beelzebub, the "lord of the flies," or the devil.  This symbol of evil stumbling "Between the light and me" suggests that there is a point in which the soul of the speaker "could not see to see" where she is headed in eternity, whereas in "Because I could not stop for Death," the driver of the carriage that takes the speaker to her grave is "kindly" and "knows no haste"; the death holds no terrors as in the other poem; in fact, it is almost seductive. 


In addition to the tone of the poems, you may wish to compare/contrast the sequence of events and poetic devices in the poems, the sort of expectations set up by phrases such as "last onset," "the king" and "be witnessed" in "I heard a fly buzz" with the phrases in "Because I could not stop for Death" such as those in the first stanza, "We passed the setting sun/Or rather, he passed us," and others that indicate a more leisurely trip toward eternity, whereas in "I heard a fly buzz," the predatory fly waits to claim a corpse. 


Yet, characteristically of Dickinson, there is no enlightenment at the end of either poem.  The speaker is driven, albeit leisurely, inexorably to her grave; the king witnesses the death, but he cannot control anything but the allocations of the speaker's material possessions.

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