The subjects of life and death have been a traditional theme in poetry and they are central to most of Dickinsons poems. Love and ecstacy are also primary in her poems and they are often cconcerned with celestial betrothal. In the poem "Death is a subtle suitor", Dickinson illustrates the love-death symbolism, an explicit rendering of deatyh as the lover who transports her in his carriage to be married in a proxy wedding. Dickinson uses the metaphor of a funeral as the wedding journey to eternity, setting up a

The peculiar duality of this journey is reflected by the vehicle in which they travel, 'a bisected Coach.' This has a variety of meanings that illustrate the twofold nature of the journey tey are taking. As a wedding coach it divides the wife-to-be from the virginal life left behind, and as a heavenly chariot, the mortal from the immortal. The third and final change of status lies beyond the poem because it lies beyond death. She only knows that she is goind to a 'Troth unknown.' The impossibility of describing her spiritual marriage is put plainly in this phrase and in the vagueness of her projection of the glorious life to come, with 'Kinsmen as divulgeless/As Clans of Down.' Thus the suitor is transformed into the bridegroom and prospective husband in the three stages of the poem. These three stages correspond to the awareness of death, the act of death, and the state after death. Thus Dickinson portrays the speaker as the bride of God, entering heaven in her beutiful carriage.

One of the most striking characteristics of this poem is the speaker's awareness that while death is always with her, his rel

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Approximate Word count = 757
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)