Emily Dickinson’s poem, “Because I could not stop for Death,” and John Donne’s “Death be not proud” have personified death from different perspectives. Personification is an imperative figure used for a long time in literature to enable the audience to connect with the subject described (Sigvardsson 559). It includes giving human characteristics to ideas, objects, and animals to make the reader more emotional and sensitive. Dickinson’s poem personified death by giving it human-like characters such as being a thoughtful, young, powerful man, immoral, and having no perception of time. John Donne’s “Death be not proud” poem humanizes death by talking about it and condemning it for being powerless and relying on kings, fate, chances, and desperate men. The two poems humanize inanimate forces while hitting their absolute impersonality to pass their messages.
Dickinson’s poem starts by providing human attributes to death to enable her audience to connect with the poem. In the first stanza, she personifies death as a young man pursuing a woman. The author states, “Because I could not stop for death, / He kindly stopped for me” (Dickinson, lines 1-2). In this piece, the author gives death the human ability to be thoughtful and stop a woman as if it had an appointment with the woman. The woman appears to be grateful and, at the same time, thrilled by her encounter with “death,” which poses as a young man. In this case, death is pursuing the woman, and she seems interested, which is ironic. In addition, Dickinson gives death attractive human traits such as a “powerful man” who will change the woman’s life forever. This shows that the author wants the reader to perceive death from a positive perspective by giving it attractive human traits. Thus, in the first stanza, the author uses personification to let readers know that he is talking about death in a friendly way.
Dickinson has used personification to pass his message of life after death. For the people who believe in life after death, this poem is kind and encouraging to them. Dickinson supports this view of life by portraying humans as immortal. The poem states, “The carriage held but just ourselves / And Immortality” (Dickinson, lines 3-4). The author gives the woman and death a person to watch over them, and in this case, it is immortality. When death stops the woman, they need a carriage to transport the soul to heaven. In addition, they travel both of them, death and the woman, and then the third figure is immortality. This shows no more death because they have welcomed immortality in their journey (Sigvardsson 560). Thus, the author personified immortality and death to make the reader understand how they are connected to immortality. The carriage is used to show that there is life after death. In this case, Dickinson humanizes inanimate forces, including death and immortality, to pass their message on how the soul is immortal.
The author gives death the human-like trait of having no perception of time to pass the message that it does not discriminate. In the second stanza, the author states, “We slowly drove, he knew no haste” (Dickinson, line 5) to signify that death does not consider properties such as the time before taking a person. “He knew no haste” shows that death did not hesitate to pick anyone whose time had come. It does not consider the period a person has lived on earth, and that is why some people die young while others die while old. In this stanza, the author has used personification by giving Death human-like characteristics like having no perception of time. She successfully manages to show her audience that death does not have a perception of time by personalizing it.
In the second poem, “Death be not proud,” by John Donne, the author personifies death to show the audience that it is not as scary and mighty as many people think. The author states,” death, be not proud, though some have called thee /mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so” (Donne. Lines 1-2). In these lines, the author talks about death as if it were a person. He tells it that it is not as fearful and dreadful as it thinks. According to the author, when a person is dead, they resemble a person who is asleep, and since sleep is pleasurable, he considers death a more pleasing event. In lines five and six, he states, “From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, /Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow” (Donne, lines 5-6). These lines imply that death is a way of resting and which is more enjoyable. Thus, the author uses personification to show the reader that death is delightful and not as scary as many people consider it.
Donne uses line nine and personification to convey that death is a slave and not mighty. In this line, the author shows that death cannot choose whom to pounce on next; however, it must rely on various people and circumstances. The poem states, “slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men” (Donne, line 9), whereby all the mentioned can kill. For instance, the king has the right to order the execution and desperate men who take their lives away. Fate can lead to the death of a person, while sometimes chances may force people to kill. The author compares death with “poison, war, and sickness” (Donne 10) because they can take life too but under given circumstances but not on their own. Thus, the author uses personification to convey that death is a slave because it must rely on other individuals or factors to take life.
Finally, the author has used personification to ridicule and shame death. He refers to it as “poor death” (Donne, line 4) to show he has no regard for it. Further, he states, “And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well” (Donne, line 11). Donne mocks death by comparing it to drugs that can make men sleep. Thus, death has no right to be proud because it has no difference from those drugs. Additionally, he writes, “One short sleep past, we wake eternally” (Donne, line 13), which signifies that when people die, they wake up to live for eternity. Therefore, the author uses personification to enable his audience to understand that he is mocking death.
In conclusion, the two poems have used personification to pass their different messages to the readers. The first author, Dickinson, gives Death human attributes such as a young man, powerful, with no perception of time, and personifies immortal to pass her message to the audience. The second author, Donne, humanizes death to show that he has no fear over it, that it is a slave, and to ridicule it. This shows that both authors have humanized inanimate forces while still hinting at their fundamental impersonality in conveying their message to their audience.
Works Cited
Dickinson, Emily. “Because I Could Not Stop for Death.” Poetry Foundation, 2018.
Donne, John. “Holy Sonnets: Death, Be Not Proud.” Poetry Foundation, 2019.
Sigvardsson, Anna. “Don’t Fear Poetry! Secondary Teachers’ Key Strategies for Engaging Pupils with Poetic Texts.” Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, vol. 64, no. 6, 2019, pp. 953–66.