I Heard A Fly Buzz

This poem is typical of the poet’s style because Frost writes a lot about human nature and compares people to nature itself. He judges people and society as a whole. He also uses a lot of literary devices in his poems like metaphors. Frost describes nature in beautiful ways in his poems and “Fire and Ice” is just like the rest of them. It isn’t a departure of common themes.

“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

To analyze the poem better I took each word as if it symbolized a certain characteristic. In lines three and four, "From what I've tasted of desire I hold those who favor fire" it led me to believe that Frost was trying to use desire as a metaphor to fire. Desire, can usually be used a negative or a positive manner depending on the context it's use. In the poem I think that Frost is using it in a negative sense, because he is uses words like end, perish, and destruction in the poem. Negatively the word desire can mean the drive to win or receive something at any cost, the urge for power, which is very destructive. In lines six and nine "I think I know enough of hate to say that for destruction ice is also great and would suffice". Saying that ice is a metaphor to hate. The word hate is worldly known to have a negative condensation. Hate is also

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.

In opposition to “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”, Dickinson published her work of “I Heard a Fly Buzz – When I Died”. In this particular piece of literature, the author disbeliefs in an afterlife. In this poem, a woman is lying on bed with her family surrounding her, waiting for the woman to pass away. The woman, however, is anxiously waiting for “…the kings”, meaning an omnipotent being. Finally when the woman dies, her eyes or windows, as referred in the poem, “could not see to see “. When the woman passes away, she couldn’t see any angels or gods as she expected would be there, but instead, she is fluttered into nothingness. She isn’t traveling to an afterlife as she had expected to unlike in the poem of “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”. The woman finds out that death is a simple end to everything.

In “I heard a fly buzz-when I died-” the speaker starts off stating that he/she is on his/her deathbed and adds a simile after, “The stillness in the Room/ Was like the Stillness in the Air/ Between the Heaves of Storm” (2-4). The speaker is saying that this stillness is referencing to the eye of the storm, which is eerily quiet like the air in the room around his/her deathbed. Like any storm after the eye has passed, the rest of the storm is following, which means that more is to come in this room. For the second stanza the speaker states that there are now other people in the room “The Eyes around” (5). These

In the poem, "I Heard A Fly Buzz", Dickinson writes in the last stanza, "With Blue-uncertain stumbling Buzz (referring to the negative pest)-Between the light-and me-And the Windows failed-and then I could not see-." Writers state that here Dickinson, (writing during the Civil War, 1863 specifically) speaks of the importance of mortality and death, and highlights that death has been on its way for a while. (pg 1179, l.13)

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:

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

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.

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)”.

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.

The great debate of whether the world will end in a fiery ball of destruction or a frozen wasteland has baffled the minds of many people. A man named Robert Frost has written a poem called "Fire and Ice" that describes his thoughts on how he would prefer to leave this world. Upon reading this poem, the reader can derive two distinct meanings of fire and ice; one being of actual fire and ice destroying the world, and the other having symbols for the fire and ice, such as fire being desire or passion and ice being hatred and deceit. Although this poem is one of his shortest poems with only nine lines, it is also one of the most famous works that he has ever created.