A voice from the dead, a remembering of her closing moments on the earth, a inquiry of the ultimate destination of the human soul, Emily Dickinson gives us a chilling thought in her poem, “I heard a fly buzz-- when I died.” Dickinson not only perplexes us with the idea that a dead person is speaking to us, but she makes us question the significance of death, and what comes subsequently. Is there really a defining moment, “when the King / Be witnessed -- in the Room”? Is all that awaits us at the close of our lives, a simple, flesh-eating fly? Through this morbid elegy we gain a message, that perhaps the anticipation of dying is more significant than that single moment.
The central image in this poem is the fly, it is the only thing she seems to be focused on, and it is also symbolic of death. She is expecting a King, or God to arrive at the moment of her passing, rather, she gets the company of a fly, the very consumer of carrion, dead flesh. Maybe Dickinson is saying that after our bodies are done, so are we? She may be implying that death has no spiritual significance, which there is no eternity or immortality for us, there are, of course, other interpretations of the fly. After further research on this poem and the significance of flies with death I found that the fly might stand for Beelzebub, the lord of the flies. Beelzebub is also used as a different name for Satan, or any devil in general. So could it be that there is a spiritual significance to death? These are only ideas; I prefer the first interpretation of this poem, as it makes more sense to me.
Dickinson uses imagery in another way, when she compares the stillness in the room to the stillness between the heaves of the storm; we gain an understanding of the feeling in that room. That is also a simile because while she is talking about two different things, the stillness is a common factor between them. This comparison also relates in another way; since there is a silence in the room at that moment, and there is a silence in the storm between the two upheavals, she may be suggesting that there will be dramatic moments preceding and following her death. As the poem reveals, however, there is no such disturbance. The people witnessing the death have drained their grief, their eyes were “wrung dry” of tears and they were in anticipation of her departure. They were preparing themselves for "that last onset", her death. "Last onset" is an oxymoron; onset, means beginning, and last means end, so this is really saying that this is the beginning of the end, the beginning of eternal life. She is ready to die; she has given away her possessions and anticipates death and its revelations. In the last stanza the fly is the only thing she can see, the only thing she can hear and then her “windows failed to see,” everything went black; she had died. The rhyming parts of this poem are when she says, “Between the light -- and me - / … / -- and then I could not see to see.”
The mood of this poem is first of an expectancy of death, almost a wanting for it, for whatever reason. It was getting ready for that big moment, then the mood changes. It modulates into a sad kind of feeling, it’s almost saying, “this is it,” meaning, we die and then all there is to comfort us is this fly. You can get another metaphor from this poem, when Dickinson says that she is waiting for, “…when the King / Be witnessed -- in the Room,” I think she is saying that she was waiting for the King, or God, to acknowledge her passing. When the King never comes, can we assume that God is no more than a fly; that nothing really happens when you die?
This poem is wonderfully written, and so interesting to read. I don’t agree with the ideas presented in it, however, the matter of opinion and beliefs aside, I thoroughly delighted in reading and analyzing this poem. I love her use of punctuation, my favorite line in this poem is in the last stanza; “Between the light -- and me -- / And then the windows failed -- and then / I could not see to see”. When you read it, it flows so nicely and has a certain rhythm to it, a wonderful ending. I liked how she likened windows to her eyes, she used a few different metaphors, and they are my favorite poetic devices.
Dickinson is such an interesting writer, you can read a whole dozen of her poems, and find a different message in each of them. She uses her words and punctuation in such a way that you know her work when you see it; it is so distinct. She is one of the poets I enjoy reading in my free-time, it takes a while to grasp what is being recounted, but once you do, the poems are genuinely superlative. “I heard a fly buzz -- when I died,” is a marvelous poem concerning the ultimate question, what happens when we die?