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Poetic devices play an important role in poetry by enhancing the poem and intensifying the audience’s mood. These poetic elements allow the audience to develop clear mental images. The audience can also feel and understand the poet’s emotions deeply to the extent that the audience can think that they were present was going through the same thing as the poet. Although “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Dickinson and “The Raven” by Poe were written decades apart, both use poetic devices in an enchanting manner to illustrate the concept of death and eternity. Through this analysis, the paper aims to determine the poets’ degree of use of poetic devices in their respective works.
Death and immortality are the central themes in both poems. In “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” Dickinson portrays death as a gentleman whose arrival brings to a halt the labor and leisure of the living. The narrator reflects on the life lived, from when the narrator was a child with a whole life ahead of her to adulthood, which is implied by the symbolism used in lines 9 and 11. Death is also portrayed as a lonely journey as the carriage contains only death and the narrator (Dickinson). Similarly, in “The Raven,” Poe is devastated by the passing away of his love, Lenore. The narrator wonders whether the Raven came at the command of Pluto, who is the god of the underworld, Satan, or the storm, all who are in another world. The reciter is left in sadness as a result of the death of Lenore. In stanza seventeen, the narrator instructs the Raven to leave his loneliness (Poe). Dickenson, on the other hand, talks about death from an angle of a dead person. Both poems revolve around the concept of death and immortality.
In “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” Dickinson uses symbolism to symbolize the human development from a child to an adult through the use of grains in the field and children at recess. In line 23, Dickenson also uses the setting sun to represent the end of life. The swelling ground symbolizes the grave (Dickson). Identically, in “The Raven,” the Raven represents the narrator’s grief following the death of his love Lenore. The bird also represents death. The chamber represents the isolation of the narrator from people, which is a sign of his overwhelming grief (Poe). In both poems, symbolism is used to express the complex idea of life and death.
Dickinson uses biblical allusion to demystify the concept of death. The horse that carries the narrator and death is an allusion to the fourth horse, in four-horse riders of the Apocalypse described in Revelation, which was also ridden by death. However, Edgar’s use of allusion in “The Raven” is unmatched. The poet employs both Biblical and mythological illusions. Aidenn, which translates to the Garden of Eden, Balm in Gilead, has medicinal properties and turning the white Raven to black alludes to Hebrew folklore (Bakhsh). Pallas, the god of Warcraft, Pluto the underworld ruler, and Ovid allude to Greek mythology. “The Raven” has a stronger allusion than “Because I Not Stop for Death” since it employs the utilization of both mythological and biblical allusions.
In “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” death and the sun imbue human characteristics during the journey, death, and the narrator pauses. The narrator describes death as civil; likewise, in “The Raven,” death is personified. The narrator gives the Raven ability to speak. It responds to the narrator’s questions by uttering the word nevermore. Both poets give human attributes to nonhuman characters. Dickinson and Poe both use alliteration in their poems to create rhythm. The consonant sound /g/ in the word gazing and grain and the consonant sound /d/ in dews and drew closely follow each in succession in “Because I Could Not Stop for Death.” Likewise, in The Raven consonant sound /w/ in “weak and weary” and consonant sound /l/ in “lost Lenore,” each follow each other in close succession. The use of alliteration in both poems creates musical effects.
“The Raven” has eighteen stanzas, and each stanza has six lines. The poem has both internal rhymes and External rhymes. “Morrow” and” sorrow” in the second stanza are examples of words that create an internal rhyme. “Dreary” and “weary’ are used to create an external rhyme (Bakhsh). It has a regular scheme of ABCBBB for external rhyme patterns. On the other hand, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” has only six stanzas, each containing four lines, and even though the poem has internal and external rhymes, its rhyme scheme is also not as regular and strict as that of “The Raven.”
Dickinson uses dashes and capitalizes words even in the middle of the line throughout the poem to bring more attention to the words. Conversely, Poe only capitalizes words at the beginning of the sentence. Poe also uses Onomatopoeia rapping and tapping; the structure and the rhyme scheme of the two poems differ. Poems express the views and emotional states of their writers. Each poet is different; therefore, they use different poetic and literal devices to express themselves. When poets use the same device, the degree of use and the manner often differs, as shown in this paper.
A poem is a form of art, and poets leave unique signatures on their work in the process of expressing themselves. These signatures are formed by the poem’s structure, the poetic devices they use, and the magnitude of use of the selected devices. The analysis of these two poems has shown that the choice of selected devices and their magnitude of use differ from one poet to another, but themes such as death and grief are universal.
Works Cited
Bakhsh, Ladan Farah. “A Deconstructive Reading of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”.” Galore International Journal of Applied Sciences and Humanities, 2020.
Dickinson, Emily, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. Little, Brown & Company, 1960.
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Raven:(1845). Trade Binders Local, 1998.
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