Two of Emily Dickinson's poems, "Because I Could Not Stop For Death" and "I Heard A Fly Buzz-When I Died", concern one of the issues which are bound to happen in our life: death. However, all similarities end just in here. Although both poems were written less than a year apart by the same author, their ideas about what we can expect after death completely differ from each other. In one, Dickinson suggests that life after death does exist, whereas in the other - she claims that after life -there is nothing more than death . Only several clues in each piece help us to recognise which poem 'believes' in what.
In the part, "Because I Could Not Stop For Death," we are told the story of a woman who has been captured by Death. This is the first sign that this poem 'defends' the statement that something after passing away definitely exist. In most religions, there is a spook who delivers a human soul to somewhere else, usually a heaven, a purgatory or a hell.
In the fifth stanza, Death and the woman pause before "...a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground- The Roof was scarcely visible- The Cornice in the Ground-". Well, the poem does not directly imply it but anyway - it is very likely that this grave belongs to the woman. What is more, it is also possible that her corpse already rests in a coffin below the ground. If this is exactly in this way, then her spirit might be the one who is looking at the 'house.' Spirits or souls usually indicate on the fact that afterlife must be thereafter.
In the sixth and, at the same time, final stanza - the readers are given the proof that "Because I Could Not Stop For Death" 'speaks' in favour of life after death. The woman recalls how it has been "...Centuries- and yet feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses' Heads were toward Eternity-". To the heroine of the poem, it has been a few hundred years since Death's visit, but to her, it has felt like no more than a day. As the body cannot live on for...
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