Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson in consideration of Death.
Do we live forever? Perhaps consciousness continues after death. I do not fear death at this point in my life. I believe that we are all trapped spiritual beings. I think we are eternal, and just temporarily existing here in human form. The speaker in Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, and the speaker in Emily Dickinson's Because I Could not Stop for Death both have no fear of death. Death can fearlessly be viewed as a spiritual, romantic, and transcendental escape from the bondage and pain of the soul.
The narrator of Emily Dickinson's "I Could not Stop for Death" has no fear of death, and believes in immortality. Consider the very beginning of the poem. .
"Because I could not stop for Death .
He kindly stopped for me .
The Carriage held but just Ourselves .
And Immortality.".
Here the narrator speaks straightforwardly about how immortality was given to the subject by death. With a belief in immortality death can possibly bring less fear. In Robert Frost's Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening the narrator says lines like, "He will not see me stopping here to watch his woods fill up with snow." As well as "The woods are lovely dark and deep" Lines like these could possibly allude to an urge to rest there in those woods forever. It is possible that Frost is just writing about someone stopping to urinate while on their way somewhere. However, he may possibly have been writing about another relief known as suicide.
Death may be a relief in order to kill the pain of life. Death may also release the bondage of our souls. In Frost's poem, the speaker may be fantasizing about freezing to death and committing suicide peacefully. Frost writes, "To stop without a farmhouse near/Between the woods and frozen lake/The darkest evening of the year." In Dickinson's poem right away it states "Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me.
