Emily Dickensons Because I Could Not Stop for Death and John Updikes Dogs Death - Research Paper Example

?Running Head: DEATH AND IMPERMINANCE Emily Dickenson’s “Because I could not stop for Death” and John Updike’s “Dog’s Death” and the theme of death with reflections of impermanence Name Class University Emily Dickenson’s “Because I could not stop for Death” and John Updike’s “Dog’s Death” and the theme of death with reflections of impermanence Introduction In writing about death, there are many paths towards the subject that can be taken. Where some might approach it through a fear of death, others will discuss it as a warm friend. Death is both the decay of what has past, and the final, warm embrace of a life that has been followed through to its end. Where the subject of death is concerned, it is often personified, embodied into a living being with which a relationship emerges. The nature of death is that it is an enigma, often defined by writers in order to come to a place where it is better understood, but never fully explored as the exploration of the nature of death leaves no room to turn back and share its truths. In Emily Dickenson’s poem, “Because I could not stop for Death”, Death is given a persona, a character in which to interact with the narrator. In John Updike’s poem “Dog’s Death”, the nature of death is explored for its physicality. The indignities of death give over to the frailty of life as a young dog fights for life. Death is not a person, not some well-mannered suitor but a messy painful end within the framework of sorrow. Through the diverse discussions of death in poem by Dickinson and by Updike, the nature of death is examined in converse terms of literary descriptive imagery. Emily Dickinson Emily Dickenson is a historical figure who is an enigma, whose history holds the romance of solitude and the emergence of a literary set of work in which emotional exploration is broad and beautiful. Her writing had a sense of humor, an explicit sexuality, and a sense of emotional connectivity that did not exist within her life. Her work is an exploration of a mind set free from the constraints of her own solitude. Lundin (2004) writes of Dickinson that “The woman, who was never comfortable in society and who spent the last half of her life within the confines of one relatively secluded house, does not at first to appear to be a subject worth connecting to other things occurring throughout the American nineteenth century I which she lived” (p. x). However, Lundin (2004) goes on to describe the various ways in which she touched upon the human condition, her writing revealing a beauty in the world despite her desire to be shut apart from it. When Emily met Death, she had written 1,800 poems and had taken credit for none of the few that she had published to that date (Lunsin, 2004). She had written in anonymity, her words belonging solely unto herself until Death freed her to become immortal through the legacy of her writing. Her poems lyrically describe the world and the human condition, her heart-felt experiences or desires for experiences expanded within words that provided her a space in which to live the life that her reclusively solitary life may have denied her. Her writing was not unknown, as the myths about her life tend to suggest. Lundin (2004) reports that her letters often included her poems and she had no compunction about sharing what she had written with others. Lundin (2004) contends that she intended to invest her time in work in order to have fame after her Death. He uses he work to support his case. He quotes from her poem. “A Spider sewed at Night/Without a Light/Without an arc of White - /If Ruff it was of Dame/Or Shroud of Gnome/Himself himself inform - /Of Immortality/His strategy/Was physiognomy” (Lundin, 2004, p. 2). She expected her work to live on, all her work that came before to be given to the public past her Death and in her words be granted an immortal existence. “Because I could not stop for Death” “Because I could not stop for Death/He kindly stopped for me;/The carriage held by just ourselves/And Immortality” (Truss, 2003, p. 96). The first stanza of her poem states the future of her life. She chased her life, her writing life that is, with an energy that was fervently prolific. She wrote about the world as she experienced both in reality and in the way she would choose to experience it. Her desire for immortality placed squarely in the relationship that she imagined with Death, that when it came for her within it she would find an extension of her existence waiting to move forward with her. These lines can be interpreted from a number of different positions. One literary device that is never in dispute is that of personification. The figure of Death is considered to be an entity, sometimes interpreted as a suitor who has come to give his intended a carriage ride, a common form of courtship. The personification of immortality, then, is considered to be the chaperone. Therefore, in her poem Dickinson has made a ‘date’ with Death and is accompanied with immortality on their ride together (Priddy, 2008). The narrator of the poem is considered to be Dickinson, her voice the one telling the story of the imagery she is evoking. These first few lines develop a scenario in which the reader becomes immediately immersed. When read, it is possible to see a black carriage, ornately beautiful with a man with dark hair and pale skin holding out his hand to a young woman. The humorous and whimsical look on the face of another, his dress in red with a black top hat, sits within waiting for the young woman to take the hand and the ride. The short lines with their economy of word usage allow for the reader to use his or her own ideas about the imagery to develop a scene in which the ‘story’ of the poem takes place. In the second stanza, she puts away the leash of life, her tether to the worldly plane so that she could join him in his space. She speaks of driving slowly. Dickinson writes “We slowly drove, he knew no haste” (Truss, 2003, p. 96). This line speaks volumes about the relationship she has with Death. She is there with him, her presence stated as she says ‘We slowly drove’, but she clearly has relinquished control him when she shifts to ‘he knew no haste’. This switch provides clues to several aspects of culture and of her point of view. One point of view can be seen as a patriarchal viewpoint in which she gives over control of the event to the male. Another, however, can be indicative of her willingness to take the ride that Death is providing, but her unwillingness to walk towards Death at a pace of her own choosing. If Death is not in any hurry to take her forward, she will enjoy the time that he is taking to get to the destination. The third stanza becomes a final transitional phrase in which the many aspects of life, from the time of childhood to the time of the sun setting, becomes a rolling set of images of life as time passes. The impermanence of life becomes tangible, represented by images that are within a state of progress, the impending decay of life not yet touching them as the cycles of life continue to roll past. The fourth stanza puts the third into perspective as the world changes to one that is cold, still and filled with the being of Death and his essence. She separates herself from the cold that is experienced in life by displaying that she is not dressed to withstand the cold, but that she is beyond this state. The third and fourth stanzas provide the contrast of life and death. The third stanza is filled with sunshine and warmth, but the fourth shows the chill of death, its stillness and static nature manifested within the lines of her work. The fifth stanza allows a pause to see the end of the narrator. The carriage pauses to look at her grave, described as a house and suggesting a place where someone lives. The narrator looks on with a detachment from the meaning that a grave might hold. Where in the beginning there is a relationship between herself and Death, an almost warmth of intimate knowledge that seems to transpire within a framework of the warmth of life, as the poem continues she has become ethereal, a member of the world in which the cool, detached existence of Death stands separate from the warmth and vitality of life. Even social meanings become vague and without any impact within that fifth stanza. The ride takes on the eternal as she accepts that the carriage was not faced with an ending, but with a direction that does not end. She has embraced Death as her companion and will travel within its space and time frame. Dickinson has a streak of possessiveness within her intimacy. Cull (2010) suggests that Dickinson, among her letters, shows a possessive streak that leaks through her poetry (p. 41). This can be observed in her use of the subjective within her poem “Because I could not stop for Death”. The elements of the thoughts within the poem are defined by the narrators perspective, that of Death not taking preeminence, but her own thoughts having the framework in which the discussion of death are undertaken. Even in her inability to bother with Death as indicated within the first stanza. Dickinson’s desire for companionship is also evident within the poem, her need to have company into eternity so great that she hijacks Death as her companion, only the two of them and the companionship of Immortality sent into forever. The permanence of her companionship into death is in contrast with the impermanence of life. Although, for Dickinson, her permanent state of isolation, without a companion with which to share life, may have felt like a state of unending loneliness in which the companionship of Death brought relief. She did not seek Death, but did not deny his courtship of her. John Updike Some of the poems written by John Updike revolved around the topic of death as it related to his experiences of losing his parents and grandparents. “Dog’s Death” is one of the more successful examples of an examination of death as it is described for its existence in this reality (Pritchard, 1994, p. 104). Where Dickinson placed her setting within a mystical realm, Updike asserts the experience from the side of life and the experiences of pain and ending that is the definition of death from the side of life. Within his relation of death from human perspectives to those of the experiences of his dog, the simplicity of death in contrast to the emotional aftermath is explored. This notion can be related to the experiences that Updike had with the deaths of his family members. According to Dicken (2004), Updike had an interest in theological topics and Christian theological influences can be seen throughout his work (p. 70). However, in “Dog’s Death” the experience of death is given worldly sentiment, without the embellishment of theological interpretation. The poem is about his dog Polly’s young death in 1965 and the way in which it affected his family. The work is a story of an event, the topic being explored for the way in which it affected those around the subject of the poem. The feelings of the subject are not specifically relevant as the sentimentality is set squarely within the human range of experience and emotions (Johns, 1999, p. 72). “Dog’s Death” The first stanza of the poem discusses the center of the dog’s life which is the approval of her family as it is given for using the papers as a place to expel her body waste. This act and the ensuing approval represent the love that is shared between the dog and her owners. As well, her inexperience in life is balanced against her efforts to learn to use papers for this purpose. As she is suffering and has no way in which to know how to relate the story of her suffering to her owners, she suffers silently, giving only the barest indications that something is wrong. The dog is young, and her predicament can be seen for it tragedy, where the concept of death in the Dickinson poem is not seen as a tragedy, but as a welcomed respite. There is no sorrow in the Dickinson poem and no relative sense of loss as is immediately experienced in the Updike work. The narrative of the poem jumps back and forth between a past in which knowledge was not known and a present where it has been revealed. Updike writes “We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction/The autopsy disclosed a rupture in the liver./ As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin/And her heart was learning to lie down forever” (Johns, 1999, p. 73). The imagery is harsh, the tragedy of the events revealing a sense of guilt and shame for not realizing earlier that the dog was dying, her life spilling out as it became used to the end that was nearing. The last line suggests that they were trying to get her to lie down, a game of instruction between a dog and her master, but for this dog she was learning to do it through the loss of her life as she slowly was coming to an end. The dog crawls away to die, her efforts to overcome her situation without any communication value between the narrator and the animal. Life had commenced as usual, the children sent to school and the day begun, when they found the dog in its last throes of death underneath the bed of their youngest child. In both poems, the presence of children represents a cycle of life, their newness in contrast to the decay of death. In the Dickinson poem, they appear as representations of the continuing cycle of life, an association with the sun bringing forward this sense of youth. In the Updike poem, this generational influence is more subtle, the story reading like a recitation of the facts, but the presence of the children still representing innocence about tragedy and death. In the end, the presence of a sign of impending death, that of a system that relieves itself in the form of diarrhea, is presented in contrast to the last effort that the dog gave, which was to bite at her owner. That attempt to bite is like an admonishment for not realizing her peril at an earlier time. In this sense, the owner failed her, even when she had managed to succeeded in one of her prime learning tasks – to use the paper to relieve herself. Conclusion The poems approach the concept of death from very different perspectives. In the Dickinson poem, Death is personified and made to be an event that is embodied in an entity which acts outside of experience and is part of mythological evenst. In the poem by Updike, the realities of death, the transition of the body from life towards its end and the emotional impact on those who are left behind is discussed in terms of reality over mythology. Death is not an entity, but is an event in which suffering and losses in dignity occur. For Updike, death puts into perspective the expectations of life and the immaterial constraints that are put upon each other when death is not a part of the dialogue. The dog was good when she was using the paper in life, but that expectation becomes poignant and tragic as her physical condition far outweighs the need for her to obey, even though she has heroically tried to obey. These poems represent death with two different meanings. Dickinson represents it as something almost pleasant, a passing of a need to hold onto life and new journey in which she is given companionship. For Updike, the event is sorrowful and filled with the indignities that were suffered by his beloved pet. Updike situates death in this world. Dickinson situates it in an unknown world in which her dream of the event is given an unrealistic universe in which she has detached her desires for life. The subjectivity of the event are diverse as the narrator is relating her experience of death in Dickinson where in Updike the experiences related are of those who watch the event of death. The impermanence and cycling of life are discussed from very different perspectives in these two poems as they discuss the event of death. References Cull, R. (June 2010). Beyond the cheated eye: Dickinson’s lyric sociality. Nineteenth Century Literature. 65(1): 38-64. Dicken, T. M. (Autumn 2004). God and pigment: John Updike on the conservation of meaning. Religion & Literature. 36(3): 69-87. Johns, B. (1999). Old dogs remembered. San Francisco: Synergistic Press. Lundin, R. (2004). Emily Dickinson and the art of belief. Grand Rapids, Mich: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. Pritchard, W. H. (1994). Playing it by ear: Literary essays and reviews. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Priddy, A. (2008). Bloom's how to write about Emily Dickinson. New York, NY: Chelsea House Truss, L. (2003). Eats, shoots & leaves. New York: Gotham Books. Read More