Emily Dickinson's Poetry

Death is a common theme found throughout many of Emily Dickinson’s poems. Although much of Emily Dickinson’s work deals with death, she interprets death differently in nearly all of the poems she wrote concerning the subject. Her poems centering on death are at times peaceful, at times disturbing, at times morbid, and sometimes they show death as something to be expected or anticipated. Emily Dickinson’s poems “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died” and “Because I could not stop for Death” are both centered on her fascination with death; however, each poem conveys a different viewpoint about the afterlife. Although both poems convey slightly different viewpoints about death, the poem “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died” is better because Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson was also known to be infatuated with the issue of death and the ensuing afterlife, in particular because she was interested in resolving religious doubts about eternal life (Heller 2). In many of her poems, Emily Dickinson accepts the reality of death; however, she exaggerates the events surrounding death in order to reveal the conflict produced in the minds of human beings as a result of experiencing or visualizing particular events (Ahmadi and Tayari 3). Furthermore, her poems concerning death examine a range of feelings or emotions human beings have concerning the subject. For example, in her poems “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died” and “Because I could not stop for Death,” Emily Dickinson explores the feelings and thoughts of two women that have died; one of whom is looking back to the moment of her death, and the other that is traveling with Death, incarnate, from the world of the living to the afterlife. The two poems are similar in that they both touch on the theme of death; however, the message each poem conveys about an afterlife is distinctly

As the poem opens up, the speaker makes it known that she is in a quiet room waiting to die when all of sudden a fly interrupts “The Stillness in the Room” (Heller 3). While the speaker can hear the fly buzzing about the room, she also lets the reader know that there are other people in the room ‘gathering firm’ for the ‘Onset’ of death, “when the King” will present himself to the speaker and lead her to the afterlife (Heller 7). Next, as the woman recalls making her last will and testament, wherein she willed away her material belongings, the fly again disrupts the scene with its “uncertain stumbling buzz,” distracting the woman’s thoughts of death and the afterlife (Heller 3). Then, focusing more on fly’s incessant buzzing than on what is to come after death, the woman’s eyes fail her and close. The poem ends with the woman’s loss of consciousness, which can be taken to mean the woman