Contents
Introduction
Chronology
9
13
Chapter 1: Background on
Emily Dickinson
1. The Life of Emily Dickinson
Ruth Miller
17
Emily Dickinson, daughter of prominent Amherst, Massachusetts parents, lived in the family house all her life,
was unsuccessful in getting her poems published, and became a recluse.
2. Death and Dying Surrounded Emily Dickinson
Alfred Habegger
25
The deaths of many people Dickinson knew and the ever
present cemetery adjoining the family’s property had a
devastating effect on the young poet.
3. Dickinson’s Obsession with Death
John Cody
34
People died at alarming rates in Dickinson’s home town,
and her culture tended to romanticize death, but the root
cause of her obsession with death was her mental illness.
Chapter 2: Death and Dying in
Emily Dickinson’s Poetry
1. Death and Dickinson’s Quickened Imagination
David Porter
42
Death, as a promise of certainty in a turbulent world, enlivened Dickinson’s imagination and shaped her language.
2. Dickinson’s Connection of Death to Time
Clark Griffith
48
Time eventually brings us to death which, to the living
survivors, is hideous and mind altering pain. But to the
dead, it is the unraveling of a mystery unavailable to the
living.
Date: July 20, 2012
Comp Specialist: adarga
Edit session: 777
3. Representation and Personification of Death
in Dickinson’s Poetry
Thomas H. Johnson
59
Dickinson approaches the subject of death and personifies death from a variety of perspectives. In one of her
most famous poems, he is a fly. In others, he is a monster, a tyrant, and a gentlemanly suitor.
4. Dickinson Affirms Vitality in Life and Death
Robert Weisbuch
70
Although Dickinson often portrayed death as evil, she
believed in an afterlife, but one not free of pain.
5. Dickinson’s Gothic Poems Challenge
Social Order
Joan Kirby
80
As in the gothic fiction of her day, Emily Dickinson’s poems paint a macabre picture of death. She speaks of the
living dead in this world and death as the ultimate, forbidden freedom.
6. Dickinson’s Depiction of the Bereaved Is Varied
Paul Ferlazzo
89
The immediate response to the death of a loved one is
shock, as one mechanically performs the required tasks
and rituals.
7. Death’s Implications in a World
Without Meaning
Wendy Martin
96
Dickinson sees death as the final adventure in a chaotic
world. The dead have their immortality in the memories
of the living.
8. Frost as Death in Dickinson’s Poems
Patrick J. Keane
The problem in interpreting Emily Dickinson’s vision of
death is whether she saw it as the absolute end, or
whether she saw death as part of a natural cycle that included resurrection.
103
9. Dickinson Explored Death Unflinchingly
Bettina L. Knapp
112
The view of God is shaped by the reality of death in
Dickinson’s poems. In the context of the Civil War, she
regards neither death nor God as good.
10. The Freedom in Death and the Uncertainty
of Immortality
Jane Donahue Eberwein
123
Dickinson’s poems suggest that life confines us within a
globe. She is shown grieving for the dead and envying
them their freedom.
Chapter 3: Contemporary Perspectives
on Death and Dying
1. The Idea of “Stages” of Grief Is a Myth
Russell Friedman and John W. James
133
There is no scientific evidence of specific “stages” of grief,
widely accepted by the psychiatric community for the
last forty years.
2. The Death of a Loved One Can Lead to Renewal
Darlene F. Cross
140
Experiencing the death of a loved one first places the
survivor in a protective shock as she moves and thinks
like an automaton. Later comes denial.
3. Facing Death Puts Life into Perspective
Randy Pausch
146
A person, knowing the truth of his own, certain death,
refuses to give in to despair.
4. Western Approaches to Death Are Unnatural
Maurice Abitbol
152
Western science can fashion a more humane way of dealing with death by looking to Eastern mysticism.
For Further Discussion
For Further Reading
Date: July 20, 2012
Comp Specialist: adarga
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162
Edit session: 777
Bibliography
Index
163
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