"Because I Couldn't Stop to Die" by Emily Dickinson is a story about the transition from life to death. dead. It begins with Death stopping to accompany him on his journey to the afterlife. Throughout this poem, the reader follows the speaker through different stages of life, through death and out the other side where she looks back on her journey. Each of the stages has a purpose and a well-defined meaning. The first reference to death is made in the first line in which it refers to death in its physical form. “Because I could not stop to die” (Dickinson 1:1) implies that death is pursuing her or, at a minimum, following the chariot. The implication is that the speaker is in too much of a hurry to make time to die. The interesting observation is that she does not paint the picture of death as others have done. She portrays Death as not threatening, because he (Death) accompanies her in his car. She then goes on to describe a third person in the carriage, immortality. Another interesting observation is his use of three. Three people in the carriage, her, death and immortality, also signify the three stages of life and the three types of immortality. Immortality has three definitions, the first being immortal, or deathless. (Marcellino 102) This first definition refers to the afterlife, or the next stage of a life's passage. The second definition is fame, or making a living through an action. The third definition is to have eternal rest here on this plane. His physical body will remain here in a tomb and will not pass into the afterlife. To understand why Mrs. Dickinson could use such gentle terms for death, we must first understand her past. She was a Puritan Calvinist (Polanski 39), and therefore she believes... middle of paper... that in the day” (Dickinson 6:21-22) gives the idea that she is looking back on the scene as if it had been a long time since it happened. As she moves on to the next sentence, feeling shorter reminds us that we ourselves look into the past and see a shorter span of time than there actually was. What happened years ago seems to have happened last week, and so on. Again, this refers to the journey of life or the passage of time. This entire poem was a thoughtful journey and is finalized in its last two lines. “I supposed at first that the horses' heads/were toward eternity” (Dickinson 6:23-24). The horses were the engine. They carried the story as it unfolded and took the speaker through the passage from life to death. It is entirely appropriate that she refers to them looking towards eternity as that was the direction in which she was carried..