I Heard a Fly Buzzed-When I Died
By Emily Dickinson
Analyzed by Rebekah Porter
In the poem “I Heard a Fly Buzzed- When I Died”, A woman, who is already dead, is looking back on the moments before her death. In the first line, she announces that she heard a fly buzz before she passed. After she announced this, she describes the events prior to her death. In the first stanza, she recalls the room is very silent, like the two phases between a storm. In the second stanza, she talks about the people in the room with her as she passes. In the third stanza, she signs her things away, when a fly “interposed’ her thoughts. This leads to the final where she says the fly is blotting out light and eventually she is blinded. In the end, the theme of the poem is that death can be peaceful but death can be quick.
Dickinson uses many literary devices in this poem to help describe the poem, such as imagery, foreshadowing, personification, and much more. When she talks about the fly buzzing before she dies, she provides a picture. “I heard a Fly buzz - when I died”(Dickinson 1). This provides us with a picture of a...
