Mortailty and Eternity in Emily Dickinson Poems Essay

Emily Dickinson is the epitome of the modern poet. Her poetry breaks from the traditional style with dashes to separate ideas. Dickinson, also, challenged the religious belief of her time. Growing up as a Puritan in Massachusetts, Emily Dickinson knew the bible, yet as an adult, she questioned that belief. Many of her poems seem focused on death; death of the body, death of the soul, death of the mind. Why was she so intrigued with death? The poems that embody this theme are: â€Å"Success is counted sweetest† (#112), â€Å"Safe in the Alabaster Chambers† (#124), â€Å"I like a look of Agony† (#339), â€Å"I felt a funeral in my brain† (#340), â€Å"Because I could not stop for death† (#479), and â€Å"I heard a Fly buzz-when I died† (#591). These poems seem to†¦show more content†¦Later in life, especially after the death of her father, she secluded herself to her room. During this time, she wrote over one-thousand seven-hundred poems, which were organized in a packet called fascicles. Only a few of her poems were published within her lifetime, but after they were revised into more of a conventional means, she stopped seeking to be published. Themes that seem to repeat themselves in Dickinson’s poems are religion, love, nature, and death. Though, in the one-thousand seven hundred poems that Dickinson wrote she seemed to be intrigued about death. Many of the poems seem to contradict each other by means of what happens during and after death. She seems to be struggling with the religious belief of living eternity in the afterlife with God. Each poem concerning death gives a deeper look into what Dickinson was struggling with. It is interesting that no two poems dealt with death in the same way. One poem deals with the pain and anguish of death as seen in â€Å"I like a look of Agony†. The eyes glaze once – and that is Death Impossible to feign The Beads opon the Forehead By homely Anguish strung. It is also seen in â€Å"Success in counted sweetest†, where the men dying on the battlefield are contemplating their failure before they die. As he, defeated, dying, On whose forbidden ear The distant strains of triumph Burst agonized and clear! In â€Å"I felt