Emily Dickinson :: essays research papers

The complex fate of human beings in this tragic yet beutiful world and the possible fortunes of the human spirit in a subsequent life is what interests us all in life, and this is the central theme in most of Emily Dickinsons work. In her enticing poetry, Emily establishes a dialectical relationship between reality and imagination, the known and the unknown. By ordering the stages of life to include death and eternity, Dickinson suggests the interconnected and mutually determined nature of the finite and infinite. She aims to elucidate the incomprehensible, life, death, and the stages of existence. The subjects of life and death have been a traditional theme in poetry and they are central to most of Dickinsons poems. Love and ecstacy are also primary in her poems and they are often cconcerned with celestial betrothal. In the poem "Death is a subtle suitor", Dickinson illustrates the love-death symbolism, an explicit rendering of deatyh as the lover who transports her in his carriage to be married in a proxy wedding. Dickinson uses the metaphor of a funeral as the wedding journey to eternity, setting up a system of correspondences between the changes brought about by death ans the changes in role of the unnamed partners in this spiritual love game. 'Death', to be sure, is not the true bridegroom but a surrogare, which accounts for his minor role. He is the envoy taking her on this curously premature wedding journey to the heavenly alter whre she will be mariied to God. When 'Death ' first appears as a suitor she changes from a girl to a blushing virgin. This must be a 'stealthy Wooing,' for though she knows it will result ina glorious new status for her, she is vaguely aware that it will mean a renunciation of all the world she has known. She shows a maidenly resereve by the manner in which she forces to conduct his courtship, by 'palid imnnuendoes' and a 'dim' approach.' But he does win at last and attains his goal, for he is a 'supple Suitor'. The second change comes twith great suddenness for it is the kiss of death, transforming her from virgin to bride, or at least the betrothed. Then 'Death' bears her away 'in triumph,' both from a substitute wedding and towards a final one, to the sound of 'brave Bugles' such as would accounce a royal merriage, or the Day of Doom.