Emily Dickenson and the Theme of Death

        Emily Dickenson, an unconventional 19th century poet, used death as the theme for many of her poems. Dickenson's poems offer a creative and refreshingly different perspective on death and its effects on others. In Dickenson's poems, death is often personified, and is also assigned to personalities far different from the traditional 'horror movie' roles. Dickenson also combines imaginative diction with vivid imagery to create astonishingly powerful poems.         In the 1862 poem, After Great pain, a formal …

…presumably because she is traveling toward eternity. Maybe Dickenson's Death is only courteous to those who are worthy of heaven?         Emily Dickenson had the rare talent to ingeniously transform death, a normally unwelcome subject matter, into creative and highly thoughtful pieces of literature. Dickenson's poems show us new ways of looking at death and its effects. Through inventive diction paired with graphic imagery and sometimes shocking perspectives, Dickenson captures our imaginations with her timeless works.