Analysis of I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died and Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson

These two poems address the same problem: chimney sweepers. They are similar in structure because they both rhyme with the last words of each line like aabb. For instance, in the first poem the rhyming goes like this, “When my mother died I was very young, (line 1) And my father sold me while yet my tongue (line 2) Could scarcely cry “‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep” (line 3) So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep” (line 4). The second poem incorporates a similar rhyme scheme. For example, “A little black thing among the snow (line 1) Crying “‘weep! ‘weep,” in notes of woe! (line 2) “Where are thy father & mother? Say?” (line 3) “They are both gone up to the church to pray” (line 4). Blake most likely generated the analogous rhyme scheme in order to portray the identical

“I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died” is more ridged and scary when it comes to explaining death. The narrator is looking at death from the afterlife while seeing the more frightening side of death. This poem’s setting stays entirely in the room. In the beginning of the poem, the fly is disturbing the “stillness in the room” (Belasco 1331). The stillness in the room means she is dying alone with no family or friends. The start of the poem explains how there was no peace in the death by comparing it to a “storm.” It can be felt that the speaker is waiting for her death as they can hear the fly buzz like when you hear a clock tick as you wait for time to pass. Since the character has to wait for her departure, it shows she is experiencing a slow death. The fly buzzing plays an important role because it shows the advancement of death. Dickinson shows the progression of death by enhancing the last sense noticed before death when she focuses on hearing the smallest details in her surroundings. As the narrator is nearing her death, she can hear things that the normal average individual wouldn't notice. The fly distracts the narrator’s final moments and upsets her peaceful death. The earthly fly in the end stands between the narrator and the calm spiritual aspect of death. In the

The two poems are similar in their corresponding feeling of dread for death. Using diction,

Both of these poems talks about selling and money and young men’s lives, but they are both unquestionably different.

There are lots of things in the poems that are similar and different both of the writers are different and similar in many ways .In the poem’s “When You Are Old” By W.B Yeats, and “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” By Dylan Thomas.They have a bunch of similarities and differences.For example in each of the poems the theme of the poems are death and the narrator’s message in the rhyming pattern poems are both similar in the poems ,and the writing style of the poems are rhyme schemes and therefore they use different rhyme scheme in each of the poems.

Comparing and Contrasting Dickinson’s Poems, Because I Could Not Stop for Death and I Heard a Fly Buzz - When I Died

In some instances within literature, writers surprise readers by incorporating ideas that the reader may or may not expect. Within Emily Dickinson’s poem “I heard a Fly Buzz When I Died”, readers are introduced to a ghostly speaker that discusses the scene of their deathbed. Readers are exposed to many surprises throughout various aspects of the poem.

Emily Dickinson’s poem “I heard a fly buzz when I died” is a reflection on what happens when one dies. In the poem, the speaker is waiting to die. It seems as though they are expecting something spectacular to happen at the moment of their death. This spectacular event they are expecting does not happen.

First of all, based on both poems, the attitude of the poets is influenced by the diction of the poems as well as tone and mood.

Therefore we have two poems which are deliberately changing their structure from the norm in order to create effect. However, these effects have totally different intentions, which lead to the end of the similarities and the first of many differences between the two poems.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1836) is one of the greatest poets in American literature. Although she spent most of her life working in relative anonymity, her status rose sharply following her death and the subsequent publishing of much of her surviving work. Two of Dickinson’s most well-known poems are “Because I could not stop for Death—" and “I heard a Fly buzz - when I died”. I say known as because Dickinson never actually gave her poems proper titles. For this reason, the first lines of her poems have come to be used as a distinguishing reference. This paper will briefly analyze both poems in an attempt to both compare and measure their relative literary merits.

The poems, “I heard a Fly buzz-when I died” and “Because I could not stop for Death” both give details of what the women experienced with death. In “I heard a Fly buzz-when I died” it is safe to say the woman took death with a grim sight calling it a “…Fly…” (12). The fly in the poem can be viewed as death since flies often gather around dead things and death itself. In, “Because I could not stop for Death” the description of the woman’s grave as her “…House…” (17) gives insight as to how comfortable she is in her resting place. A home is usually visualized as a place of warmth and happiness. Although both poems are about death, both poems give different views of death.

Emily Dickinson once said, “Dying is a wild night and a new road.” Some people welcome death with open arms while others cower in fear when confronted in the arms of death. Through the use of ambiguity, metaphors, personification and paradoxes Emily Dickinson still gives readers a sense of vagueness on how she feels about dying. Emily Dickinson inventively expresses the nature of death in the poems, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (280)”, “I Heard a fly Buzz—When I Died—(465)“ and “Because I could not stop for Death—(712)”.

I Heard a Fly Buzz – When I Died –, written by Emily Dickinson, is an interesting poem in which the poet deals with the subject of death in a doubtful yet both optimistic and pessimistic ways. The central theme of the poem is the doubtfulness and the reality of death. The poem is written in a very unique point of view; the narrator who is speaking is already dead. By using symbols, irony, oxymoron, imagery and punctuation, the poet greatly succeeds in showing the reality of death and her own doubtful feelings towards time after death.