Emily Dickinson's Because I Could Not Stop for Death

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as a person, in fact, as a kind man who drives a horse-drawn carriage. Also, death is described as someone who “knew no haste.” By describing Death in this way, Dickinson establishes a tone of calmness and friendliness, which is unusual because death is regularly viewed as dark and gloomy. In stanza two, the speaker states that “I had put away / My labor and my leisure too, / For His Civility.” This helps characterize Death as a figure of importance because the speaker had to stop everything she was doing and join “Death.” The tone gradually becomes suspenseful and foreboding as “Death” and the speaker “slowly drove” away. The imagery that Dickinson uses provides a setting for this poem. Collomar Ammetts comments that this poem is “being compared to a funeral procession and that they always proceed "slowly" and often majestically” (Collomar). When the narrator meets “Death”, “Death” takes the narrator on a carriage ride with just the two of them, and of course “Immortality.” ...

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