Life after death is a topic that humans know less about, consequently this leaves us with a sense of uncertainty. Emily Dickinson wrote a poem in iambic meter titled "Why I Couldn't Stop for Death" to tell a story about a character's journey through life, which helps explain the concept of the cycle of life. In the first line, the poem opens with the title "Why I couldn't stop for death", this portrays that the speaker didn't want to stop for death. However, the speaker seems to personify the concept of death as a gentleman in the next line “He kindly stopped for me” as death had the intention of stopping for them. The last two lines of the verse refer to a "carriage" (3) in which the lord took this person for a ride, and inside with the two characters there is "immortality" (4). Dickinson's use of diction describes the sense of death as a gentle man, which suggests the emotion of comfort that she has entered his "carriage." On the other hand, her use of the word “restrained” conversely implies that the speaker did not want to stop because it suggests that she was not there voluntarily. The “carriage” is an important symbol of the journey from life to death because it is used to tell the story in chronological order, as if it were a real carriage journey through life. The author's choice of words does not convey a clear message, which intensifies the feeling of the unknown because the word "immortality" could have different meanings depending on the reader, such as hope for the afterlife or fear that there will be no it will be nothing after death. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay In the second verse, continue with the story by describing their journey in more detail. “We drove slowly – He knew no hurry” (5) gives the sense that death is not in a hurry because there was no reason to rush as death is a natural part of life. An important poetic device used many times by the author was alliteration. For example, the speaker states "And I had set aside / Even my work and my leisure, / For his civilization", the two words work and leisure are two components that people have throughout their lives , i.e. work and free time. The speaker is implying that they had to give up these two factors of their life for death because he was “civilized.” The third stanza begins to go into detail about the surroundings by informing the reader that they passed a school where children were “trying hard” (9). This choice of diction and its placement give us the sense that the children are trying or straining. This relates to the previous phrase in the previous stanza because once the character “puts aside”(6) their work and leisure, it seems as if they also put aside their efforts to live. Throughout the third stanza, there are multiple examples of alliteration: “recess” and “ring”(10), “looking” and “wheat”(11), and finally “sunset”(12) and “sun”.(12 ) These details are placed in pairs of alliteration to emphasize the journey and give it a deeper meaning. It shows the different stages of life, for example, children at playtime is the childhood stage, while the harvested corn field they walk through is the adulthood stage, and the setting sun implies the elder stage. The use of “looking wheat” imagery also refers to the cycle of life from the moment the wheat is harvested, only to be grown again the following year. These details can be found in lines 9-12, and the importance of these.