Emily Dickenson’s poem exemplified the individualistic and innovative style of the Romanticism era through her unconventional use of dashes. Dickenson utilizes the pause associated with the dash to encourage the audience to think slightly deeper about the moment just before an individual is approached by death. The abundance of dashes also serves an ironic purpose throughout the poem. Typically, when considering the crossroad of death, humans are known to show feelings of reluctance or a desire for just a second of pause. However, the reality is that once one approaches “that odd fork in Being’s road,” these dashes are nonexistent, since the only option in this case is to venture towards the “God at every gate.”