Emily Dickinson Syntax

Some of the poems Emily Dickinson wrote, usually offered many different views of death that involve physical and emotional responses of the soul and body’s journey through nothingness, madness and even eternity. The greatness in her poems comes from the use of literary devices to give meaning to death and the different interpretations of the journey through death. Although Dickinson presents contradicting thoughts sometimes, it is clear that she believes that there are many types of deaths in a human being’s life. This paper compares and contrasts the theme of death in Dickinson’s three poems titled “I heard a fly buzz”, "Because I Could Not Stop for Death” and “After great pain a Formal Feeling Comes”.

“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 first stanza introduces the speaker’s earliest memory as they are starting the journey of crossing over. Right away the reader is introduced to a fly buzzing around the room, “I heard a Fly buzz- when I died-“(1). The fly represents the soul leaving the body and witnessing the surroundings of the life they are leaving behind. The speaker is aware that the people around have crying and Dickinson illustrating the scene with a metaphor, “Was like the Stillness in the Air- Between the Heaves of Storm-“ (3-4). The speaker realizes that the family members who have come to mourn have not made any sounds during the periods of wailing and quietly sniffling. Dickinson’s comparison to a storm that changes sound constantly it perfectly displays how people mourn. First loudly, then quietly before the wails rise again.

However, the poem has fluidity despite its apparent scarcity of rhyme. After examining the alteration of syllables in each line, a pattern is revealed in this poem concerning darkness. The first nine lines alternate between 8 and 6 syllables. These lines are concerned, as any narrative is, with exposition. These lines set up darkness as an internal conflict to come. The conflict intensifies in lines 10 and 11 as we are bombarded by an explosion of 8 syllables in each line. These lines present the conflict within one's own mind at its most desperate. After this climax, the syllables in the last nine lines resolve the conflict presented. In these lines, Dickinson presents us with an archetypal figure that is faced with a conflict: the “bravest” hero. These lines present the resolution in lines that alternate between 6 and 7 syllables. Just as the syllables decrease, the falling action presents us with a final insight. This insight discusses how darkness is an insurmountable entity that, like the hero, we must face to continue “straight” through “Life” (line 20).

Emily Dickinson's poem "I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died" is centralized on the events of death and is spoken through the voice of the dying person. The poem explores both the meaning of life and death through the speaker and the significant incidents at the time of near death that the speaker notices. Many of Dickinson's poems contain a theme of death that searches to find meaning and the ability to cope with the inevitable. This poem is no exception to this traditional Dickinson theme; however its unusual comparisons and language about death set it apart from how one would view a typically tragic event.

She opens the poem reflecting on the start of her first episode, all while personifying her soul telling it sing, but writes that her “strings were snapt.” The string is a metaphor for her mind and the word-choice to describe her mind is identical to the flow of her maniacal brain waves: quick, charged and aggressive. She explains how mind is mended through the pace at which she can put words onto the page. The second day escalates her mind to the point where she loses control over it. Dickinson’s uses of the dash points to the distinctive operation of her thought processes-mind to page. Another poem, They Shut Me Up In Prose” displayed how manic-depressive individuals are mistreated, even shut out due to their uncontrollable behavior. Her state of being influences her judgment and social behaviors and she battles with the idea of “stillness”. The word “still” is almost used as a form of mockery, “Could themselves have peeped — / And seen my Brain – go round — / They might as wise have lodged a Bird / For Treason – in the Pound -.” The bird is used as a metaphor for her mind, to describe the foolishness lodged in a request for her to remain stagnant. The overall theme of outsiders seeking to mute the behavior of patients with mental illness shows the human desire to attempt to mold the unknown to the norms of society. Dickinson’s work has the reader reflect on all the

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

This poem is written in ballad form which is odd because one would think of a ballad and think a love story or an author gushing on about nature not an allegory about personified Death. Dickinson both unites and contrasts love/courtship with death, experimenting with both reader’s expectations and the poetic convention dictating specific poem form. This is why Dickinson is widely hailed because of her unconventional writing methods.

One aspect of the poem that surprises readers is the relationship between the speaker and the fly .The first surprise involved in this relationship, is the combined revelation of the fly and the speaker’s death. As the poem begins, the speaker says to readers, “I heard a fly buzz-when I died” (Dickinson, 1). After reading that the speaker heard the buzz of a fly, readers may expect the death of the fly or more detail on the fly itself. However, the speaker hits readers by telling them that they heard the buzzing at the moment of their own death. Dickinson is immediately telling readers that her poem contains supernatural elements that link to the fly. This may come as a shock to readers, since they may ponder the significance of the fly within the speaker’s death, as it is not yet revealed by the end of the poem’s first line. The relationship between the speaker and the fly continues to be surprising, as the speaker describes the fly as the power that controls their life (the gateway between life and death). The speaker says:

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.

Two of Emily Dickinson’s poems, “I heard a Fly buzz-when I died” and “Because I could not stop for Death” are both written about life’s stopping point, death. Although the poems are written by the same poet, both poems view death in a different manner. Between the two poems, one views death as having an everlasting life while the other anticipates everlasting life, only to realize it does not exist. While both poems are about death, both poems also illustrate that the outcome of death is a mysterious experience that can only be speculated upon with the anticipation of everlasting life.

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)”.

This poem conjures images of a solemn ceremony in which the soul reigns superior by shutting out everyone, including the emperor, similar to the shutting out of everyone that Dickinson did. In one of Dickinson’s most famous poems, “I heard a Fly buzz,” the theme of death is presented as well as a symptomatic characteristic of bi-polar disorder. The poem itself epitomizes her preoccupation with death and the macabre and also shows how the small, normally ignorable sound of a fly buzzing becomes the only thing heard, she magnifies this sound in a situation when it seems that everything else is much more important, but this inability to drown out extraneous noises is typical of someone suffering from manic-depression. The form of this poem employs all of Dickinson’s formal patterns: trimeter and tetrameter iambic lines, her specific use of the dash to interrupt the meter of the poem, and it is in ABCB rhyme scheme.

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.