I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died

Emily Dickinson spent her whole life becoming a writer instead of seeking for a husband, this is why most all of her poems were focused on loneliness or losing someone. In the poem “I hear a Fly buzz when I died”, tells a lot about her, I figure at her funeral when she would pass away, it would be pitch silence that any would be able to her a fly buzz. As she says “between the heaves of storm”, meaning she would be dead. Her Childhood reflects on everything she writes in her

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.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on 10th December, 1830, in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts. As a young child, she showed a bright intelligence, and was able to create many recognizable writings. Many close friends and relatives in Emily’s life were taken away from her by death. Living a life of simplicity and aloofness, she wrote poetry of great power: questioning the nature of immortality and death. Although her work was influenced by great poets of the time, she published many strong poems herself. Two of Emily Dickinson’s famous poems, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” and “I Heard a Fly Buzz- When I Died”,

The subject of death, including her own was a very prevalent theme in Emily Dickinson’s poems and letters. Some may find her preoccupation with death morbid, but this was not unusual for her time period. The mindset during Ms. Dickinson’s time was that of being prepared to die, in the 19th century people died of illness and accidents at an alarming rate, not to mention the Civil War had a high number of casualties, she also lived 15 years of her youth next to a cemetery. Dickinson’s view on death was never one of something to be feared she almost romanized death, in her poem “Because I Could not Stop for Death”, she actually personifies death while narrating from beyond the grave. In the first stanza she states “I could not stop for

Similar ambivalent themes are seen in Dickinson’s views of death. Death is primarily seen in a negative light and she supports that perspective in “I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -” When Dickinson starts this poem, the reader senses a feeling of control from the narrator. The narrator is ready for death and accepting it; she writes “I willed my keepsakes - Signed away/ What portion of me be/ Assignable” and the audience sees her willingness to go. However, “There interposed a Fly” and this fly’s interruption created a change in tone. The narrator felt the windows fail and this could be seen as a metaphor for losing her “spot” in heaven. This poem makes death seem almost scary and one could assume that Dickinson views death this way. Contrarily, in “I like a look of Agony” she portrays death as a serene, authentic concept. The narrator says there is no faking death and that’s what they most appreciate of death. Dickinson creates a relaxing tone associated with death and upon reading this certain poem, a reader may assume she views death as calm and genuine.

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.

Harold Bloom, an American literary critic, summarized Dickinson’s ability as a writer in one sentence: “Her unique transport, her Sublime, is founded upon her unnaming of all our certitudes into so many blanks; it gives her, and her authentic readers, another way to see, almost into the dark” (Grabner, Hagenbuchle, and Miller 192). Dickinson’s inspiration was her own doubt in her faith and existence. Through that she found meaning in her life and discovered the immortality of the soul. She became comfortable with the idea of death because to her it wasn’t an ending; it was the beginning. Her life as recluse only put more focus on the existential problems she tried to answer. After her death her poems grew in popularity, and her message was spread all over the world. She inspires many people like the composers who made art songs and the weekly churchgoer that finds strength in her poems. No matter what, the effect Emily Dickinson has had on us as readers, as people, as skeptics, as religion seekers will always be with us. Her influence is

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.

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.

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.

Emily Dickinson a modern romantic writer, whose poems considered imaginative and natural, but also dark as she uses death as the main theme many times in her writings. She made the death look natural and painless since she wanted the reader to look for what after death and not be stuck in that single moment. In her poems imagination play a big role as it sets the ground for everything to unfold in a magical way. The speakers in Dickinson’s poetry, are sharp-sighted observers who see the inescapable limitations of their societies as well as their imagined and imaginable escapes. To make the abstract tangible, to define meaning without confining it, to inhabit a house that never became a prison, Dickinson created in her writing a distinctively elliptical language for expressing what was possible but not yet realized. She turned increasingly to this style that came to define her writing. The poems are rich in aphorism and dense

Emily Dickinson was thought to have an obsession with death due to her many poems and letters that contain the subject. In the later stages of her life, many of her friends and family members died. There is a window in the house where she lived that looked over the cemetery where she was a witness to many funerals that occurred. To see such a repeated reminder of loved ones lost and the presence of death in her backyard, her thoughts frequently turned to death. Poems like 280, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” (87) shows a clear insight into how she was affected by death. In that poem, Emily Dickinson wrote about a funeral service that she must have witnessed. “And Mourners to and fro/ Keep treading – treading – till it seemed/ That Sense was breaking through”(87). Funerals can be very hard to digest for the people attending. From the few funerals I have attended, people are