I Heard A Fly Buzz Essay

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 is one of the most important American poets of the 1800s. Dickinson, who was known to be quite the recluse, lived and died in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts, spending the majority of her days alone in her room writing poetry. What few friends she did have would testify that Dickinson was a rather introverted and melancholy person, which shows in a number of her poems where regular themes include death and mortality. One such poem that exemplifies her “dark side” is, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”. In this piece, Dickinson tells the story of a soul’s transition into the afterlife showing that time and death have outright power over our lives and can make what was once significant become meaningless.

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.

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

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

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:

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 's “I heard a fly buzz when I died” is an elegy written from the perspective of the speaker who is already dead and who is reflecting back on the last moments of her life and the moment of her death. The speaker tells the story of his/her own deathbed scene: describing the final experiences and sensations before the exact moment of death. The poem uses specific language, descriptive visual and aural imagery, and other poetic devices to convey the confusion and frustration that speaker 's experience just before their death. This poem takes a fascinating point of view on death, for the poem looks to describe the moment of death itself.

Death is a controversial and sensitive subject. When discussing death, several questions come to mind about what happens in our afterlife, such as: where do you go and what do you see? Emily Dickinson is a poet who explores her curiosity of death and the afterlife through her creative writing ability. She displays different views on death by writing two contrasting poems: one of a softer side and another of a more ridged and scary side. When looking at dissimilar observations of death it can be seen how private and special it is; it is also understood that death is inevitable so coping with it can be taken in different ways. Emily Dickinson’s poems “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” and “I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died” show both

Emily Dickinson's poems, “Because I Could Not Stop For Death” and “I Heard A Fly Buzz-When I Died,” are both about one of life's few certainties, death. However, that is where the similarities end. Although Dickinson wrote both poems, their ideas about what lies after death differ. In one, there appears to be life after death, but in the other there is nothing. A number of clues in each piece help to determine which poem believe in what.

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.

In the poem, “I heard a Fly buzz (465),” by Emily Dickinson, the narrator is describing the moment when she or he is dying. Death is one of the most crucial parts of life, but we do not hear any emotion from the speaker in these stanzas. We don’t feel any sadness, frustration, or hopefulness. They don’t cry when loved ones in the room are crying. All we are given is irrelevant details of what the scene looks like from overhead. From the lack of sentiment and sensitivity about something as momentous as death, the reader can assume that the speaker is a ghost looking recalling their last moments of life.

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 is one the greatest poetry writer, and she is known for one of her master piece, “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died”. During most of Dickinson’s life, she spent most her time in isolations, locked in her room and working on poetries. Upon her death, Dickinson’s family discovered nearly 1,800 poems in her room. Notably, Dickinson often brings up death in her poem, such as sorrow, pain, loneliness, etc. Dickinson obsession with death and after death of an individual, as Amitabh stated in her literary journals “Her immediate interest in the death poems is to dramatise the event of death, to bring out the tension or conflict that such a particular event will have on the minds of human beings.” (CITE). In this case, Dickinson’s unique