Analysis: "I Heard a Fly Buzz"

I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.

The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable,-and then
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.

-by Emily Dickinson

This poem was written by nineteenth-century American poet Emily Dickinson. It describes an event that everyone must face but in a way that is difficult to imagine: she describes death from the other side.

The nineteenth century was one hundred years of upheaval in America. There was an economic depression that ruined thousands of people. The nation was grappling with the moral issues of slavery, Native American genocide and women's rights. Ordinary Americans were being forced to re-think what they meant by "equality". Some began to wonder if the grand experiment to see if a people could govern themselves had gone terribly wrong.

From this uncertainty came an American Gothic literary tradition. Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Washington Irving wrote dark tales featuring the supernatural. Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick, a novel in which the title symbol is a big, white ambiguous blog upon which readers to project their worst fears (Is the whale God? Is it a sexual image? It's up to you).

Out of this time and place comes the Dickinson's poem about dying. On her deathbed, there is stillness. "Between the heaves" means there has been upheaval and there will be upheaval later. The mourners have cried themselves dry. The dying speaker has willed away her stuff. All of the proper preparations have been made.

Then here comes the fly. A buzzing, ambiguous fly. Some interpret the fly as a symbol of Beelzebub. If we read it this way, then the fly is an ominous prophet: the speaker might be on her way to hell.

Others read the symbol as an absurd or an anti-climax. While most poets of the time wrote about death as an exalted event, full of drama, Dickinson chooses to use her words to depict a fly buzzing over a dying person. The fly is a scavenger, there for a feast.

There is no fanfare, no drama, no flourishes. The speaker sees and hears the buzzing fly and then she cannot "see to see."

At first, we don't recognize the gothic tradition in Dickinson's poetry. This poem, however is linked to the ambiguous nature of gothic literature. There is also an element of the supernatural in the speaker telling the story from the grave and there is a sense of doom. Either the speaker is going to hell or she just cannot see to see. Far cry from hovering angels. The point is that we don't know what comes after death.

Poets.org: I Heard A Fly Buzz (465)