An important aspect in the development of Dickinson's writing and her themes is her personal identification with the deaths of important people around her. Dickinson was deeply affected by the loss of young, close friends such as Sophia Holland, Leonard Humphrey, and Benjamin Newton; all of whom died before she reached maturity. Their deaths along with the death of her mother were a constant reminder, especially to nineteenth century Americans and Emily Dickinson, of the fragility of life. While the death of friends played an important role in her obsession about dying, her environment also contributed to her curiosity. The Dickinson's o

Dickinson's rhyme pattern utilized four types of rhyme patterns which were not often used by her contemporaries: identical rhymes, vowel rhythms, imperfect rhymes, and suspended rhyme. The freedom in her poetry is strengthened by her inability to be constrained by specific types of rhyme or metric patterns.

The complex fate of human beings in this tragic, yet beautiful world, and the possible fortunes of the human spirit in a subsequent life are the central theme in most of Dickinson's work. In her enticing poetry, Dickinson establishes a relationship between reality and imagination, the known and the unknown. Through her detailed and abstract context, she illustrates the mysterious, life, death, and the stages of existence.

Her variation on rhyme and meter are evident in "Because I could not stop for Death," where she uses imperfect rhyme. The lack of concise or perfect rhyme allows the reader to spend more time on the individual words rather than speed through them. The more meaning a reader finds in the words of a poem, the more they can identify the recurring symbols within its dialogue. The symbols that arise in "Because I could not stop for Death," are of death as a civil gentleman suitor, and the carriage as a representation of the journey through life.

After her years at Mount Holyoke, Dickinson left Massachusetts only on several occasions, and towards her middle age, she never left the comfort of her home. This period of isolation allowed Dickinson to work undisturbed on some of her best poetry. Many critics believe that her poems of sanity represented her mental state and perhaps indicate a shaking of the foundations of her psychic being. The lack of interaction with the outside world served as an impeding precursor to her "nervous breakdown."

In "I heard a Fly buzz- when I died," Dickinson is conveying what it is like to be on your deathbed. In the first stanza, she is describing how still the air is and she compares it to the tranquility of the air before a storm hits. She then goes on to describe the surroundings in the room. There are a group of mourning people standing around her, who wept to the point of having dry eyes. As they stood waiting for her to be taken into the arms of God, the "King," she tells of her will preparation and what part of her existence will be signed off for remembrance. Right before the speaker died, a buzzing fly captured her attention and distracted her from the painful end of wonderful life.

"I felt a funeral in My Brain," is the progression of the mind to insanity or irrationality. By using funeral symbols, the speaker is able to dramatize her loss with intimacy and clarity. Through the use of symbols from the funeral procession, the speaker is able to describe several key things in the mind's journey; the end of sanity, the loss of reason, and self-control within a formally familiar environment.

Diction is an important aspect of Dickinson's poetry, and as aforementioned, she went through great lengths to ensure that she selected precise words for each single line. However, as a result of her abundant vocabulary, many of her poems have various implications as well as associations. In her poem, "I felt a funeral in my Brain," her diction is very important in creating a parallel scene between the funeral procession and the speaker's own procession of insanity. Words like "bell" in the fourth stanza create the imagery of a bell tolling in the advance of a funeral march. The use of "I" instead of "we" or another pronoun, allows the writer to create an intimate first person portrayal of the struggle and subsequent, suffering of the speaker. Images of a funeral procession reappear in the work; however, it is her diction that ironically brings life to these images of death. Her collective use of images and diction in "I felt a funeral in my Brain," provides

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2613
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)