Anderson

Emily Anderson

Scott Harris

UNIV 392

July 11, 2018

Prompt 1

It can be easy, sometimes, to be swept up in emotions that blind people from seeing life

most clearly and becoming attached to the way things are. For most, death is a daunting part of

life that is, without a doubt, final. The unknown associated with death results in widespread fear

of change and uncertainty; however, in Emily Dickinson’s and T.S. Eliot’s poetry, death can be

perceived as a non-emotional aspect of life. To Dickinson, death is natural- and according to her

logic, a moving away from pain and suffering into paradise. In T.S. Eliot’s interpretation, death

is terrifying- but there is a certain need to suppress that emotion.

To Emily Dickinson, the indifference she experiences towards death is not necessarily

rooted in leaving her old life behind, but rather in being unafraid of what is to come. She

recognizes death as a normal part of life that people have somehow shifted into unnatural. Death

is viewed as weak and unnatural because society has labeled it this way. In describing the night

that a woman died, Dickinson writes, “The last night that she lived/ It was a common night,/

Except the dying; this to us/ Made nature different.” (XX, lines 1-4) There is this notion that

death alters reality, that death changes life at the most basic level. In death, people- the dying and

the ones watching death happen- are forced to reexamine everything about life itself.

Dickinson also confronts the way in which people use religion to come to terms with

death. Every religious faith contains, in some capacity, a way to deal with death and an

explanation into what happens after death. Dickinson exposes the way in which people, despite
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buying into the idea of an afterlife still view death as taboo or unnatural. In one particular poem,

Dickinson says, “If tolling bell I ask the cause. / ‘A soul has gone to God,’/ I’m answered in a

lonesome tone; / Is heaven then so sad?” (CXXV, lines 1-4) She explains in this how if Heaven

truly is paradise, and if the only way to reach paradise is through death, then the occasion of

death would not be a matter of mourning but rather a matter of celebration. Dickinson’s

indifference to death- first as the one observing death and next as the one experiencing death-

represents how she feels death is not an occasion for grief but rather for joy.

T.S. Eliot, on the other hand, writes in a way that suggests no matter how hard people try

to dismiss death and dying, it is natural to fear what is unknown. In “Ash Wednesday” the

speaker has an air of reserve when talking about death that assumes that coming to terms with

mortality is not as simple and natural as it may first appear. Turning back the clock is

impossible- the only option people have while they are aging is to acknowledge that life ends.

Death is final and certain- and completely out of human hands. The way in which people speak

(or don’t speak) on the topic of death makes it incredibly hard for others to know how to

approach it when mortality rears its head. Death is uncertain, as Eliot knows. At one point, the

speaker says, “Because I know I shall not know/ The one veritable transitory power” (Ash

Wednesday, lines 12-13), acknowledging that death is immutable and that, while this is a fact all

people know to be true, the uncertainty around it is vast. It is easier to be indifferent towards

death until faced with it, and once faced with the finality of death, indifference no longer

prepares people to accept their own mortality.

It is easy to accept death as unnatural and far away instead of seeing it as the reality of

life. In pushing mortality away, people are not forced to endure the struggle of coming to terms

with death- despite the fact that every person will inevitably experience death. Indifference lends
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itself to ignorance, and it is only in acknowledging death and how it impacts people at the most

vulnerable, emotional level that people might come to terms with it.