The beauty of the English language is that the usage words can be interpreted in many different ways. One person can perceive a writing to mean one thing, while another person may be thinking the complete opposite. Because of this, each reader can form his or her own point of view on what the author is really trying to convey. By making literary works open to such criticism, we may never truly know what the correct meaning of the work is. This is especially true for Emily Dickinson's poem entitled "Because I could not stop for Death-," which is one of her best-known controversial poems. Different things determine how different types of people look at a piece of literature such as Dickinson's. Age, religion, and background are some of the main determining factors that influence a reader's point of view. .
Age is one of the most primary factors that influence the reader's point of view. Being young and growing up in today's society will definitely have an effect on how you view a piece of literature. With today's literature, classroom texts and teachers heavily on how to think influence the youth. Besides being told how to perceive literature, the younger generation has also been exposed to a lot of things that would be considered by many older generations to be inappropriate. Whether the younger generation approves of it or not, they have grown up with the knowledge that it exists in today's society, and look at as commonplace. The older generations do have an upper hand on some types of readings as they have lived longer and have more life experience to draw from. While reading the Emily Dickinson poem "Because I could not stop for Death-," a younger reader might not understand the type of terminology used in the writing. Emily writes "For only Gossamer, my Gown - My Tippet - only Tulle -" (Dickinson, 16), which is language that is beyond most nineteen year-olds such as myself.
