788: The Carriage

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The Carriage

Title text: I learned from Achewood that since this poem is in ballad meter, it can be sung to the tune of Gilligan's Island. Since then, try as I might, I haven't ONCE been able to read it normally.

Explanation

Emily Dickinson is a famous American poet, who wrote a poem called "Death", about the personification of Death kindly stopping for her to pick her up. Grand Theft Auto (GTA) is a famous video game series, where the player frequently steals cars by grabbing their drivers and throwing them out of the car. The Y-button is used in GTA to enter or exit a vehicle. In this alternate version of "Death", Emily is the protagonist in her own Grand Theft Auto spinoff game. Instead of Emily being carried off peacefully in Death's carriage, she violently carriage-jacks Death and takes over his carriage to use for her own purposes.

Gilligan's Island from the title text is a 1960s sitcom with a catchy intro song.

The full version of the poem from Emily Dickinson can be found here: Emily Dickinson—Death. The Gilligan's Island song is on YouTube: Gilligan's Island intro.

Transcript

[The Grim Reaper driving a horse-drawn carriage.]

Because I could not stop for death

He kindly stopped for me

[A woman wearing her hair in a bun grabs Death by the arm and pulls him off the carriage. There is a Y-button symbol in the lower left corner.]

The carriage held but just oursel-

Death: Hey!

GRAB

[The woman takes off in the carriage, leaving Death in her dust, on the ground.]

Woman: Hyah!

[The Grand Theft Auto logo is shown, with the stamp "Emily Dickinson Edition" underneath. There is a picture of stick-Emily, arms crossed, and a scythe next to her.]

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Discussion

Fun fact: you can sing anything written in ballad meter to the tune of anything else written in ballad meter. Try singing the pokemon theme to the tune of saving grace. Davidy²²[talk] 02:23, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Do you mean Amazing Grace? 74.226.103.181 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Bah, close enough. Davidy²²[talk] 03:00, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

What is this Y-button? --JakubNarebski (talk) 16:38, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

It is the button used to enter / exit a vehicle in GTA (XBOX versions) SioD (talk) 09:28, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

You have to press a button to steal a car? -- Weatherlawyer (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

While playing the game, on that device, you gain pretend illegal possession of a pixelated vehicle by pushing the game controller button specified Katt3 (talk) 17:56, 19 September 2016 (UTC)Katt3

Is it Emily ion the comic? She is not depicted with a bun on wiki. And neither is she in most of the pics found on google. If someone makes an edition of GTA they would not necessarily use them selves as the protagonist? --Kynde (talk) 14:27, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Can we please change 'Hair Bun Girl' to 'Emily Dickinson'? We all know that's who she's supposed to be. 108.162.218.35 13:41, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Just rewrote the first quatrain with GTA wording: Because I could not stop for Death/ He kindly stopped for me/ I yanked him from the driver’s seat/ And got a carriage free. 108.162.220.221 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I sympathize fully with Randall. Since I learned (can't remember where) that this poem can be sung to "the Yellow Rose of Texas" I can't read it any other way either. 108.162.242.117 21:31, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Babylon 5 episode, "Day of the Dead" Cosumel (talk) 19:37, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Does anyone else just see "crap crap crap ..." for the main page now? I just see pages of the one word over and over. 172.70.131.222 23:35, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

btw, this also works with loch lomond. New editor (talk) 02:55, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

My SO typically uses the tune of 'Yellow Rose of Texas' for this poem. 162.158.159.155 12:16, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
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