“Because I could not stop for Death” and “Annabel Lee”...

In literature, themes shape and characterize an author’s writing making each work unique as different points of view are expressed within a writing’s words and sentences. This is the case, for example, of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem â€Å"Annabel Lee† and Emily Dickinson’s poem â€Å"Because I could not stop for Death.† Both poems focus on the same theme of death, but while Poe’s poem reflects that death is an atrocious event because of the suffering and struggle that it provokes, Dickinson’s poem reflects that death is humane and that it should not be feared as it is inevitable. The two poems have both similarities and differences, and the themes and characteristics of each poem can be explained by the author’s influences and lives. â€Å"Although Emily†¦show more content†¦Death is inevitable; it should not be feared but instead accepted, and this is the main idea and theme explored in Emily Dickinson’s â€Å"Because I could not stop for Death.† In the poem, Death is personified as a gentleman who â€Å"kindly stopped [stops] for me [her]† (Dickinson 2), â€Å"slowly drove [drives] †¦ know[ing] no haste† (Dickinson 5), and with whom she stops at a â€Å"house that seemed [seems]/ A swelling of the ground† (Dickinson 17-18) or in other words, her grave. To begin the poem, the fact that Death is represented as â€Å"if he were a human being† (Evans 15) implies that it is humane. This contributes to the idea that death is not to fear. Later on, it can be concluded that this person has control over her as she describes how she â€Å"had put away / My [her] labor, and my [her] leisure too, / for his civility† (Dickinson 6-8), which implies that â€Å"e verything that had once seemed so important and distracting now recedes in importance† (Evans 17), and how he â€Å"slowly drove [drives] †¦ know[ing] no haste† (Dickinson 5), which gives â€Å"no clear sense of the underlying purpose of the journey or its ultimate destination† (Evans 16) and thus implies that only Death knows the path and destination of the journey. Both of these examples contribute to the fact that Death completely controls a person against its will and that it is inevitable. Finally when â€Å"we [they] paused before a house that seemed / A swelling of the ground† (Dickinson