Why do the words 'death' and 'best' begin with a capital letter in the poem life by charlotte bronte?
Answers
‘Life’ is a poem written by Charlotte Bronte’. The poem is about life and a simple message that holds. The speaker expresses her views on what life really is. She tries to explain that Life is not necessarily bad, dark, and unpleasant as few of us think. The beauty of life is the elements that life holds. The success, the ups and the downs and all that contains is the definition of life, altogether. Anything might come — the dark clouds, the sufferings, or even Death. Anything can come on the way to grab away your joy and happiness. But that is what it is. With such fears, are we not supposed to be afraid of life. We just need to move on with new challenges to succeed in life.
In the third stanza, Charlotte expresses the below line;
What though Death at times steps in
And calls our Best away?
‘Death’ and ‘Best’ begin with a capital letter for a reason. The author tries to convey that whatever may come to pull our joy away, so what if something comes by. We just need to move on rather than being with the fear that something might. She stresses that even Death might come, which will be coming as a part of nature. Death is the ultimate trouble might come, but what if it comes. You just need to care less about it. Death might come and take our Best away. ‘Death’— the ultimate end of our ‘Best’. So, the extremes of the write-up — ‘Death’ and ‘Best’ start with a capital letter.
Answer:
It’s just a poetic conceit. She’s talking about death metaphorically, as though it is a person; her capitalized ‘Death’ is a personification of death that represents the concept as a human-like entity with a will and a personality. The word is capitalized because it is being used as a proper noun.
The same is true of her use of the (capitalized) word ‘Hope’ in this poem.
The capitalization of ‘Best’ is similar, in that her intent is to tie the concept of the superlative metaphorically to a person. In this case, however, it’s an actual person, not a personification of a concept.
‘Best’ being a subjective measure of merit in this context, her intent seems to have been to express the universality of our feelings toward those we love most. If she had used the name of her own beloved instead, the sentiment expressed would have been rendered personal and not universal. We all have our own ‘Best,’ our own beloved person we love above all others; the poem refers to all of them, not just Charlotte Bronte’s beloved.