In the poem by Emily Dickinson "It Was Not Death, for I Stood Up," the main character has just lost a loved one and feels such devastation that cannot be put into words, but could only be described as "not" something. She feels such loss at her loved one's burial, that his "burial reminded [her] of [hers]". He has been a huge part of her life, so when he dies, that part of her dies also, and is buried with him. She cannot put the feeling of devastation into words, for if pain can be described, it has a mortal limit and is bearable. The pain of the character in this poem is beyond that. In philosophy, one cannot describe chaos or God using affirmative words; one has to say "chaos is not, God is not." Likewise in the poem, Emily Dickinson uses negations rather than affirmative statements to describe her anguish as an intangible entity. She does not even use a word such as "agony", or "grief" anywhere in the poem in order to emphasize that her feeling cannot be condensed into a simple......

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Title: It Was Not Death, For I Stood Up
Approximate Word Count: 457
Approximate Pages: 2 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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