Dickinson & Eliot Part I, Death?

After class Wednesday, I remembered how my thoughts constantly referred back to Emily Dickinson's "Because I could not stop for Death." The clear similarity between the two is the topic of death, but the differences catch my attention even more.

Dickinson describes the coming of death as a casual meeting with an acquaintance. Death comes for the speaker and then they ride a carriage through various scenes until the speaker's grave. The physical structure of Dickinson's poem is relatively organized with six quartets and an 8-6 syllable pattern. Eliot, however, uses no distinct structure and a lot of enjambment. In the first section of The Waste Land, there seems to be about four narrators, and many different stories as well. Moreover, Eliot lacks a metrical scheme and little organization except for the breaks between lines 18-19 and 42-43. Even these breaks are ambiguous. Along with the different styles of writing, both poets have different views on death in their respective poems.

Dickinson's perspective on death is very calm. She acts as though death is not only inevitable, but perhaps even a privilege. There is Death who "kindly stop[s] for [her]" on line 2 and the casualness of their carriage trip unnerves me a bit. I would like to say I have no fear of death, but I know that when death does arrive on my doorstep, I will be brutally frightened. Dickinson's speaker acts nonchalant and the reading flow of the poem creates an ambient air of indifference. It was like the speaker was waiting for death.

Unlike Dickinson, Eliot describes multiple outlooks of death in his first section of The Waste Land. Actually, let's look at the title of the poem itself: The Waste Land. Instantly, I am inclined to relate death as bodies in a dumpster aka graveyard. It is important to note in the first stanza the speaker being frightened and the cruelty of April. It is the reminder of death of our loved ones--the time when snow is melted and no longer covers their graves. The second stanza refers to other dead things such as trees and stones and how useless these items can be when no longer living. Then the third stanza goes on to talk about "Death by water" in line 55 and how it should be feared. Even though it is just a gypsy act of tarot cards, Eliot portrays death is evil and certainly not something to be accepted as Dickinson portrays in her poem.

In these two poems, it is evident how death can be seen in various ways. The way these two poems vary in death can also be attributed to the poets themselves. Dickinson writes "Because I could not stop for Death" about 60 years earlier than Eliot's The Waste Land. Another qualitative difference is their gender: Dickinson is a female while Eliot is a male. It is from their gender that I have come to make many assumptions in their poetry. As a female in the mid 1800's, Dickinson did not have as much freedom in her life; thus her view on death is one of acceptance because she may see dying as more noble than having to live restricted in society's chains. As for Eliot, a male had more opportunities to place out his ideas, especially in the 1920's. His life is probably filled with so many fulfilling events that he has so much more to live for and fears death because it would shorten his time of life on earth.

I know it's weird to try and guess what a poet is like from their poems, but I think of it as a pretty fun game. Instead of knowing the background of the poet before reading the poem, I try to make my own assumptions and see how close I am... or how different my assumptions can be than the facts.