Because I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died Analysis

“I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died” and “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” are both poems written by Emily Dickinson and are also both poems written about death, but in two very different ways. In “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”, Dickinson has a somewhat of a positive outlook of death. The speaker in her poem has somewhat of a comforting journey to eternal life, which is also the reason why this poem by Dickinson was more powerful to me. As for in “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died”, Dickinson portrays the speaker’s last couple of minutes before death as more of an uneasy and eerie feel and when the speaker dies, it is the end with no talk about the life after death. “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” is narrated by a woman who in the final stanza we learn has been dead for centuries already. The woman describes death as a kind man driving a horse pulled carriage who stops to pick her up (670). She describes her journey as appealing and relaxing as she takes notice of every surrounding they pass up on the carriage ride to her tombstone. The views that the …show more content…
The atmosphere in the room in which the speaker laid on the death bed was described as silent and still until the sound of a fly buzzing cuts across and ruins the silent air around the death bed. The room is described to be filled with people waiting and preparing themselves for the death of their loved one. The speaker also explains having a will written up and ready to go, knowing death was right around the corner, “I willed my keepsakes, signed away what portion of me be assignable” (671). Just as everything was set and it was that time, the fly interrupts once again. In the final stanza the speaker says, that the window in the room in which they were all in failed and then continues with saying “I could not see to see”, telling us once the death happened, the speaker experienced nothing