Throughout Emily Dickinson's life, she was the victim of several tragic events that profusely influenced her poetry, and lead her to obsess and write about death. Dickinson wrote excessively about how death was peculiar, eternal, and continuous. A theme she employed in many of her poems, was the idea that immortality is a state of consciousness, in which the present is eternal. In the "Biography of Emily Dickinson," Ann Woodlief states the "Dickinson's life was marked by a succession of deaths" (Woodlief), which caused her to spend the latter half of her life in sorrow and isolation. Most of the trauma Dickinson experienced in life occurred before she was 25, with the deaths of her cousin and former mentor. Later within the span of eleven years she lost, her parent's, a cousin and her mentor, leaving her without the emotional support she needed. In an article written by Lilia Melani, an English professor at Brooklyn University, after Dickinson experienced the tragic deaths of those closest to her, "her writing began to focus on death becoming a recurrent theme in her poetry" (Melani). Peter Nesteruk, author of "The Many Deaths of Emily Dickinson" speaks of how Dickinson saw that "death was a mystery to be explored" (Nesteruk), this can be seen in her poems "Because I could not stop for Death-", "I heard a Fly buzz- when I died-", and "I died for Beauty- but was scarce.".
In Dickinson's playful allegory "Because I could not stop for Death-," death is personified as a gentleman. "Because I could not stop for death/ He kindly stopped for me," (1-2), suggests that the speaker is meeting death on his terms. Dickinson describes the carriage ride the two companions share, "I had put away, My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility," (6-8). Death is described as being "civil" and courteous, unlike the preconceived associations one typical expects in death.
