Dickinson's Because I Could Not Stop for Death For as long as history has been recorded and probably for much longer, man has always been at odds with the idea of his own death. Even those of us who have accepted death graciously, have at least in some way feared, dreaded, or attempted to delay its arrival. We have personified death as an evildoer dressed in all black; its presence swoops down upon us and chokes the life from us as though it were some street murder with malicious intent. But in reality, we know that death is not the chaotic grim reaper of fairy tales and mythology. Rather