With Respect To Death Comparison between On Buffalo Bill and I could not stop for death
With Respect To Death The imagery portrayed in both “On Buffalo Bill” and “I could not stop for death—“ is primarily centered around death. The two authors use different outlooks to personify death as an active character. The imagery in the two poems reflect both author’s perspectives of death in its only interaction with the living, the taking away of life. In this article, I will try to explain the tools used by both poets to incorporate death as a character residing in all our lives. In Dickinson’s “I could not stop for death—“, the author’s attitude towards death can have multiple interpretations that could be completely contradictory to one another. The first is to accept death as a natural occurrence in the life cycle. As the author refers to the character in the first stanza, “Because I could not stop for Death / He kindly stopped for me. ... The literal understanding of these two lines explains the courteous manner in which death, as a suitor or a carriage driver picked the author up. ... Figuratively, and while looking at the poem as a whole, one may deduct that death is of the betraying sneaky kind, showing “kindness” and “civility” in his actions as an effort to deceit the person it’s trying to seduce. ... ”(873) With this outlook, one may believe that immortality is neither a protector nor a soother, but rather an advocate of death. In both understandings, the author’s tone clearly approaches death with a sense of respect for its greatness and even a bigger respect for the dead.