Dickinson's poetry is a clear illustration of her religious-ethical and political-social ideas. Calvinism with its doctrine of predestination and its pessimism pressured her during her childhood and adolescence and colored her work so that her basic tone was tragic. She expressed a passionate yearning for religious certitude, God's help, and the good life.

By far the largest portion of Dickinson's poetry concerns death and immortality, themes which lie at the center of Dickinson's world. Her preoccupation with these subjects amounted to an obsession so that about one third of her poems dwell on them. Dickinson's many friends died before her, and the fact that death seemed to occur often in the Amherst of the time added to her gloomy meditation. “My life closed twice before its close” portrays the poet as ever-ready for the assault of death.