CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.1. Background of the Study
Death is a natural thing. It is a mysterious truth which also very sensitive topic to be discussed with others. Every living creatures will die. Even the death is natural thing, people still consider it as a cruel and unkind phenomenon. In general, the death of families, relatives, or friends will cause great pain for everyone. Everyone knows the price of every life is death, but most of us can not face it normally when death takes someone’s life.
For some people, death is intimidating. Death is considered as inevitable ending that will bring sorrow after. People try so hard to stay alive, they pay lot of money to get a healthy life and escape death. Unfortunately, death also happens to healthy people. Death is unavoidable, undeniable and unmanageable.
For some people, who believe in certain religion, death will bring profit. Instead of considering death as the end of everything, they believe death is only the beginning of new stage of life. In Christianity, people who believe in the sacrifice of Jesus for willing to die at the cross to redeem people’s sin, will live eternally with God in Heaven. They believe in heaven and the idea of afterlife.
death. In case of understanding, people show their thought through their attitude towards it. Some people show the negative attitude while others express more positive attitude.
Literature is the art of work, like any other art works, the creator expresses their thought on their work. Since the nature of literature is language and language is the tools of communication, literary works are also considered as the instrument that can be used to express creator’s feeling, idea or attitude toward everything. The topic of death has long been portrayed in literary works. Writers use novel, fiction or short story as the instrument to present their idea toward death. The topic of death has also been discussed repeatedly in poetry. Poetry is known as the most personal work of literature. The poet only chooses few words that represent his thought and the readers use their own personal experiences and knowledges to figure out the poem’s meaning. It makes each reader will have different interpretation even from the same poem.
This phenomenon encourages the writer to analyze Dickinson’s idea about death in some poems which engage death as the main theme.
People’s attitude towards everything is developing during their life time. Every moment in our life may change our attitude time after time. Literary work is basically the writing about the author’s respond to phenomena that happen around them. Dickinson has through many things in her life. Her ideas about death are absolutely influenced by her life experiences. She has been experiencing death since she was a little girl. The lost of family member or close friend really affects her way of living and writing. Death becomes an obsession because she can not stop thinking about it. In her latest life, she is living a solitude life in her house in Amherst. She only uses her poems and letters to contact with outer world. Even she lives in puritan era, where people are turning back to Christian tradition; she decides to stop attending Sunday Service. She becomes non-religious person, however she still believed in the existence of God and all the doctrine.
All of this phenomenon encourages the writer to write a thesis entitle “A Textual Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s Idea about Death in Her Selected Poems”
1.2. Problems of the Study
Based on the background of the study, the problem is:
1.3 Objective of the Study
The objective of analysis is the statements about the objects that are going to be found based on the problem of analysis. Based on the problem, the objective is:
1. To find out Emily Dickinson’s ideas about death in her selected poems.
1.4. Scope of the Study
Emily Dickinson writes thousand poems during her lifetime. She writes about everything, such as life, death, pain, social issue, and many more. In this paper, the writer wants to analyze Dickinson’s ideas about death which are reflected on her selected poems. The writer chooses fifteen poems which engage death as the main theme and discusses each of them to analyze the idea she portrays in it. The poems will be discussed chronologically to see the development of her idea time after time.
The selected poems are :
1. CLX Just lost, when I was saved! (1860)
2. CCLXXVIII A Clock stopped – (1861)
3. MDCCXVI Death is like the insect (1862)
4. DXLVIII Death is potential to that Man (1862)
6. DCCXII Because I could not stop for Death – (1863)
7. CMXLIX Under the Light, yet under, (1864)
8. MXXXIX I heard, as if I had no Ear (1865)
9. MCXLVII After a hundred years (1869)
10. MCCLXXII So proud she was to die (1873)
11. MCCLVI Not any higher stand the Grave (1873)
12. MCCCXCIX Perhaps they do not go so far (1877)
13. XCLXXVI Death is a dialogue between (1882)
14. MDLI Those-dying then (1882)
15. MDCV Each that we lose takes part of us (1884)
1.5. Significance of the Study
