Emily Dickenson's Poems

“I heard a fly buzz when I died” (I heard a fly, 1); the death in this poem is so effortless, besides the illusion of death that it presents it is so scary. The appearance of a simple and trivial fly at the peak of life only frightens and disconnects us. As we approach the end of the poem, the fly has obtained an awful meaning. Without doubt, the fly becomes the most central image. The fly makes a genuine appearance in four stanzas of the poem and that is what the speaker experiences in dying. ”I felt a funeral in my brain”(I felt a funeral, 1), this poem also clearly shows us that Emily addresses her fear of death which is very frightening to the speaker she shows this by her selflessness and her unconsciousness in this poem, we the readers are also frightened by this selfless expression of death in the sense that we experience the speakers dip in the path of insanity and the scary path most of us feel when we are about going crazy, in this poem she also emphasizes on her fear for not being accepted into heaven. So this paper focuses on how Emily Dickson uses literary terms to express her feeling about death or her connection with death and how Emily Dickinson’s life reflected on her poems.

The title of this poem “I heard a fly buzz when I died” (I heard a fly, 1) is very scary and intriguing. Intriguing in the sense that she uses a fly to show disgust, a feeling most people in the world have about death because most people don’t want to die. Also in the title the speaker uses onomatopoeia whereby she mimics the sound the fly makes “buzz” (I heard a fly, 1). There is a transition in the poem in which it emphasizes on the fly in the poem which is very symbolic and singled out in this poem because it was buzzing in a room which was...

... middle of paper ...

...rst poem she talks about death as a disgusting thing which brought about the symbolism of the “fly”, she also talk about the pain or troubles she’s going trough. In the second poem she describes her death and gives a little detail about the mourners and what she went through after death, but it was all just an illusion because at the end she sort of came back to reality. In both poems the speaker is very metaphorical which helps to make her concepts more insightful.

Works Cited

Dickinson, Emily. “I felt a funeral, in my brain” Literature: An introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama and Writing

7th ed. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Diana Gioia. Toronto, Pearson: 2013. 774. Print.

Dickinson, Emily. “I heard a fly buzz when I died” Literature: An introduction to Fiction,Poetry, Drama and Writing

7th ed. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Diana Gioia. Toronto, Pearson: 2013. 776. Print.