Paper Topic:

Analizing Poetry

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I Heard a Fly Buzz - when I died

Pictures portray Emily Dickinson as a seemingly Puritan looking frail young woman with pale skin and a tightly drawn mouth . Her portraits never exhibit any trace of life or happiness , much as her actual life may have been - empty , sad , and alone , waiting for death . Dickinson is a noted poet on the subject of death , and her death poems still intrigue readers today . Emily Dickinson 's poem , I Heard a Fly Buzz - When I Died

' exhibits the nature of death through the experiences of the author , the deliberate use of language , and precise figures of speech

Emily Dickinson is well known and studied throughout the world for her unique poetry style and focus and views on death . I Heard a Fly Buzz ' is one of her more well-known death poems , and its melodic opening line makes it a favorite among Dickinson scholars . The main themes of most of her poems are life , love , nature , and death Dickinson uses nature as a central theme that overlaps with other themes , here death . Her isolated lifestyle afforded her the opportunity to enjoy nature and study religious philosophies and practices prominent during her time such as transcendentalism . Dickinson was intrigued by the transcendental thought and wrote many lines of poetry on the subject of religion and God in nature . However , it was this same fascination with the teachings of nature and God that held her fascination with death . Whether Dickinson was enlightened or trying to be , she explored death through her poetry

In I Heard a Fly Buzz - ' Dickinson uses the fly as a literary symbol of the time between death and the afterlife . The fly is an annoying creature with a very short life span . It begins its life as what many see as disgusting and then pesters people by buzzing around in their ears or landing on their food . The fly is an annoyance temporary , but inevitable . It is everyday . The fly is taken for granted , much as death is . Dickinson realizes that people have a very short life span as well in relation to what could lie beyond our earthly lives . The fly is merely a symbol of human 's short existence

Dickinson 's precise language is so meticulously chosen that it is virtually impossible to not gain any insight from her poetry Specifically , in I Heard a Fly Buzz - ' Dickinson precisely defines the stillness ' in the room as the stillness in the air Between the heaves of storm ' This stillness is a very calm and heavy moment , one of both anticipation and relief . It is as if saying that the moment of death is a relief from life but still there is anticipation of the next storm ' or journey that the soul or body will take . After speaking about her last worldly actions to ensure her departure was in , the speaker is distracted by the fly , which draws attention away from the speaker...

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