Loading Likes... One idea that came up twice in the readings for this class is immortality. Considering Dickinson’s close relationship with religion, it seems very likely that the immortality she refers to is in a religious sense. However, I still think the poems she refers to immortality in are a little odd. Poem 479 real stands out to me for its characterization of immortality and death. From the. opening lines, “Because I could not stop for Death – / He kindly stopped for me -” there is already an implied difference in power between death and the speaker, but it seems to be the speaker that has more power. I would imagine some of the characters power over death comes from their lack of fear of it. The lines “And I had put away / My labor and my leisure too, / For His Civility” suggest that level of comfort just mentioned as there is no rush from either death or the speaker, both seem content to sit and watch. It seems like through this calm acceptance of death the character achieves some sort of peace, or perhaps immortality?

The idea of immortality comes up again in poem 764. again, I found this to be a somewhat strange poem that isn’t particularly straightforward. What caught my eye the most were the final lines “For I have but the power to kill, / Without – the power to die -“. Ideas of life and death are at play throughout the poem. I thought her comparison to life as a loaded gun was very different as I feel loaded guns are more often closely associated with death. I think these poems present two very different presentations of the ideas of life, death, and immortality and I find it interesting how such similar themes can be presented in such different ways by the same poet.