“’Twas Warm At First Like Us

Most poets that address the concepts of death use a unique, individual, and stylistic approach common to only his/her own writing. In “’Twas Warm At First Like Us,” Emily Dickinson uses several poetic devices to dwell into a unique subtopic of death: the physical changes that the body undergoes shortly after this occurrence. Cleverly using diction, tone, and imagery, she tackles the event in stages and suggests an overall theme concerning the perception of …

…The tone also undergoes a transformation in the last stanza and is no longer one of horror but one of realization and acceptance. In addition, the lack of strong verbs that the poet used in the preceding paragraph dims, displaying this new tone. At the end of the poem, the speaker has reached acceptance and is finally “adamant” about this truth. This realization is best summed up when the speaker ultimately admits: “that was all.”