Throughout her poem Because I could not stop for death, Emily Dickinson employs the use of personification, purposeful capitalization, and enjambment in her stanzas. The poem’s central themes follow the ideas of mortality in juxtaposition with immortality, as well as what is lost in the face of death. Dickinson’s six-stanza poem narrates a speaker’s progression into the afterlife – their life after Death – and readers are made to be familiar with Death as a character.

The poem’s first stanza brings readers into a sense of familiarity and calm as Death is introduced. Here we see Dickinson’s first usage of personification. Death is made to be someone with whom we are acquainted with, as the stanza’s second line states that “He kindly stopped for me” (Dickinson, line 2). The speaker is welcoming Death as a friend, and he is treating the speaker as such. Additionally, note the capitalization of three words: Carriage, Ourselves, and Immortality. Similarly to the name Death, “Immortality” is only mentioned once throughout the poem. Besides the speaker, Dickinson establishes two other characters in this narrative poem, and those characters are Death and Immortality. These are two opposing forces that juxtapose one another. Death, who is the end of life, and Immortality, who is never-ending life. There is also irony to be found in the fact that Death stops for the speaker and is in a carriage with Immortality, a being who could arguably be said always has Death stopped for them. Those who are immortal have their deaths stopped, and their lives never end. 

The second stanza is the start of the speaker’s carriage ride with Death. The journey is by no means one that is happening quickly: “We slowly drove – He knew no haste” (line 5). Of course, the carriage ride is a symbol Dickinson uses to represent the speaker’s death (with a lowercase d). Different from the character Death, this is the speaker’s life ending. As they ride in the carriage, the speaker is riding away from her mortal life. At this point, as Dickinson uses first person perspective throughout the poem, the readers are meant to assume that the speaker is the author herself. 

The third stanza continues both the speaker’s journey along with the calm, almost relaxed tone that was established in the poem’s first stanza. Once again, Dickinson chooses purposeful capitalization to describe the different stages in the speaker’s life as the carriage rides past them: “We passed the School, where the Children strove / At Recess – in the Ring -” (lines 9-10). Repetition is also present in the last two lines of the stanza, almost as though to replicate perhaps the routine of these scenes from the author’s life as “We passed the Fields of Grazing Grain – / We passed the Setting Sun -” (lines 11-12). It is also interesting to note that in this final line of the stanza, the final scene that they pass is the Setting Sun, symbolizing the day (and therefore life) of the speaker ending as she enters the nighttime (the afterlife). Dickinson also utilizes enjambment in three lines of the stanza, and it’s something that adds to the way the journey reads out to be like a montage of the speaker’s life. 

The fourth stanza is where the poem’s tone shifts from calm and relaxed to a foreboding, or even apprehensive tone. The speaker comes to the chilling realization (the pun is irresistible) that as the sun sets and a cold seems to set in, she is not dressed for the occasion. She becomes aware that she is clad in “only Gossamer, my Gown – / My Tippet – only Tulle -” (lines 15-16). It is also important to note that this is indicative of a shift in the speaker’s relationship with Death, the poem reads as though she is also self-conscious in her attire, something that she didn’t notice prior to this stanza. This fact went unnoticed because Death read as a perfect gentleman, someone who “kindly stopped for [her]” (line 2). For context, a tippet is essentially a piece of clothing that’s similar to a shawl. In this situation, the speaker’s tippet is made only of tulle, which is a very sheer material and comparable to cotton candy. Essentially, the carriage ride with Death and Immortality is no longer one of familiarity, relaxation, and comfort. Now, it is nighttime, and the speaker is in the company of characters who hold the fate of her life’s end in their hands. 

Now realizing just exactly who she is riding with, the fifth stanza introduces the readers to “a House that seemed / A Swelling of the Ground” whose “Roof was scarcely visible” (lines 17-19). The home has a “Cornice – in the Ground” (line 20) and this serves to emphasize just how small and hole-like this house is. In architectural terms, a cornice is basically the decorative moulding of a building’s rooftop. For a cornice to be in the ground is for a building to be either really small or underground. The speaker is presented with a final home (perhaps a resting place) that, quite frankly, is rather underwhelming. With an emphasis of how small it is and how close to the ground it is (ground is capitalized twice), this is actually a comparable description to what a coffin really is. After the grandiose premises of Death and Immortality – is the end of the speaker’s mortal life and the rest of her eternal afterlife meant to be spent here, in this hovel? 

Between the fifth and the sixth stanza – the final stanza – there is a timeskip. The speaker laments that “Since then – ‘tis Centuries – and yet / feels shorter than the Day / I first surmised the Horses’ Heads / Were toward Eternity -” (lines 21-24). Now abandoned in her final, coffin-like final home, Death and Immortality have left the speaker behind. It is of interest to see that Dickinson ends the final line of the stanza and poem with an enjambment, as if to leave the readers with the same emotions of the speaker. The sense of something being unfinished, or abandoned.