I Heard a Fly Buzz- When I Died

I Heard a Fly Buzz- When I DiedSpeaker 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"

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