I Heard a Fly Buzz- When I Died

Speaker talks to us from beyond the grave.

Mourners ready "The Eyes around- had wrung them dry"
Dying person ready "I willed my keepsakes - Signed away" - legal matters in order
Waiting for death to come, silence in the room
Repetition - "and then... and then... and then..." relentless, unstoppable process.
"Heaves of Storm" onomatopoeic quality.
Simile - momentary quietness as the "eye of a hurricane" the stillness at the very centre of a storm - captures the tense atmosphere of dread and expectancy.
metaphor - eyesight failing - "the Windows failed"
Mental and physical anguish
Death - Dickinson's obsession with death and morality emphasised by the fact that death is present in 8 out of 10 of the poems on this course. - poem movingly depicts the process of dying, mental collapse. indignity of the passing - made her will has all her family around her - yet the last thing she hears is a buzzing fly. last experience in the world insignificant insect "stumbling" around the room. demeans moment of death?
Religion - mocking view of religion. speaker and loved ones waiting for "the King" to be "witnessed" in the room, Jesus to take her to Heaven, expectations not borne out - no sign of Jesus, pokes fun at religious expectations by means of a crushing anticlimax - not the glorious arrival of God yet an uncertain buzzing of a stumbling fly
"For the last Onset - when the Kind - Be witnessed in - the Room -" "There interposed a Fly- With Blue - uncertain stumbling Buzz - Between the light- and me -and then the Windows failed- and then I could not see to see"

	Created by niamhmoynagh over 11 years ago

Emily Dickinson Note on I Heard a Fly Buzz- When I Died, created by niamhmoynagh on 27/05/2013.