Emily Dickinson was a poet was a very solitary poet who wrote about topics such as death. She was from Amherst, Massachusetts, and lived between 1830 and 1886. She began writing poetry when she was a teenager, and dozens of her poems were published in her lifetime. Two of her most famous poems “I Heard a Fly Buzz” and “Because I Could not Stop for Death” both reflect what it feels like to experience a near death experience and dying itself. Both are lyrical poems, and have a matching theme of acceptance, given the gentle tone of voice in the delivery of the lyrics in her poems. The mood, tone, imagery, and language are all something that compare in the many poems written by Emily Dickinson, but specifically these two written in 1862 and 1863. …show more content…
Because both poems are about death, they make the reader feel this sort of given mood of sadness, however, her tone of voice is very calm. For example, when Emily Dickinson talks about …”the Stillness in the Air - Between the Heaves of Storm…” in the poem “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died,” this makes her tone sound very calm because after a storm you usually feel calm, but while the storm is going on it is very gloomy and sad. This is very controversial because the reader is talking about the topic of death which is known to be uncomfortable as something that seems okay. Also, she says, “With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz - Between the light - and me.” This reflect Dickinson’s calm tone as she speaks about going towards the light but she isn’t upset about it. However, her “going towards the light” sets the mood as very sad for the reader because that is how it is interpreted. In the poem “Because I could not stop for Death”, the speaker talks about her death very similarly. She says, “We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain - We passed the Setting Sun,” which are two very peaceful settings that she is reminiscing from her memory. Although she is talking about what lead to her death, a sad event, she is relaxed, which sets the mood and tone for her poems. The mood is sad and discomforting because Dickinson is reflecting on her life as it is ending, but she is not talking …show more content…
For example, in “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died,” she uses words such as “The stillness in the room” and “I heard a fly buzz” help to give the reader some insight on what is happening as she is dying. The description makes the audience feel as though there is actually a fly buzzing in the room, and helps to also enhance the senses of sight and sound because it makes the reader feel like they can actually hear a fly buzzing. The fly is set to represent death is it is flying around her because she is dying. Additionally, the image of a dead body appears because when somebody dies and their body decomposes, flies come around it. This symbolizes that Emily Dickinson is already dead as she is writing the poem. In the second poem, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” she paints the image of a person that is there with her by saying that “He kindly stopped for me-” She also paints an image of “The Carriage held but just Ourselves” and passing through her memories when she says “We passed the school… We passed the fields of Gazing Grain- We passed the Setting Sun.” Dickinson sets the image of her traveling through her memories as she
Figurative language plays a key role in the poem, as well. The best example is The Morning after Death, which sounds a lot like mourning after death. In fact, mourning could even replace morning and the poem would still make sense. Another example occurs in the second stanza, when Dickinson uses the words sweeping and putting. By using such cold, unfeeling words when describing matters of the heart, the author creates a numb, distant tone. She really means that after someone dies, one almost has to detach oneself from the feelings of love that once existed for the deceased.
Living a very private life, Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in the quaint town of Amherst, Massachusetts. Dickinson lived a very withdrawn life, scarcely ventured out of her home, and fraternized with visitors even less. Dickinson had few friends to her name, choosing a life dedicated to her family and reading. This isolation is believed to be the predominant inspiration behind Dickinson’s somber work. Her poems often reflect despair, longing and an emptiness that could only be produced through overpowering emotions experienced by the author herself. Although Emily Dickinson’s “If I should die” and “It was not death for I stood up” are centered around the theme of untimely death, Dickinson’s poems also provide inspiration to those who are suffering from loss and assures them that life goes on.
One of the prevalent themes of Emily’s work is death. Since she wrote about her inner world and troubles, death as a theme could not be avoided. Emily Dickinson had to face the losing friends to death. Several deaths of family members, including her mother, father and a nephew helped contribute to the theme in her poetry. These events affected her health but she found a way to cope with the idea of death with her poetry. She developed an attitude towards death, seeing it as a transition from mortality to immortality. She accepted its inevitability and tried to make
“I heard a Fly buzz – when I died,” begins with the narrator describing how “The Stillness in the Room Was like the Stillness in the Air” (Dickinson 2-3). This description of her surroundings provides a sense of tension in the air causing it to appear heavy and thick. In the following stanza, the narrator mentions “The Eyes around – had wrung them dry – And Breaths were gathering firm” (Dickinson 5-6). By this description, the reader can envision an image of the aftermath of the surrounding individuals crying. Furthermore, the succeeding stanza involves the narrator willing her belonging to friends and loved ones. However, a twist begins on the twelfth line, “There interposed a Fly” (Dickinson 12). Due to the use of Dickinson’s vocabulary, it is evident that the fly is interrupting this serious moment in time. Finally, in the last stanza the narrator negatively describes the fly and its imposition on her final
In opposition to “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”, Dickinson published her work of “I Heard a Fly Buzz – When I Died”. In this particular piece of literature, the author disbeliefs in an afterlife. In this poem, a woman is lying on bed with her family surrounding her, waiting for the woman to pass away. The woman, however, is anxiously waiting for “…the kings”, meaning an omnipotent being. Finally when the woman dies, her eyes or windows, as referred in the poem, “could not see to see “. When the woman passes away, she couldn’t see any angels or gods as she expected would be there, but instead, she is fluttered into nothingness. She isn’t traveling to an afterlife as she had expected to unlike in the poem of “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”. The woman finds out that death is a simple end to everything.
She hears a fly buzzing, an onomatopoeia, and through similes in line three and four she compares stillness in the room to “like the Stillness of the Air—Between Heaves of Storms.” The dynamic between the buzzing fly, hovering around the room signifying her death, and the tension of the room sets up the gravity of her situation. In the second stanza Dickinson uses synecdoche to illustrate the people around her mourning her death. She uses “eyes” and “breaths” as the main subject of the sentence. An interpretation of this is to blur the explicit mention of people and instead focus again on the senses or visual and auditory imagery.
Dickinson uses imagery the most in this poem with “The stillness in the room” Dickinson is making you think about the room look like and how it feels in there. The tone and mood describe nothing but Dickinson which is relating to her life the tone of the poem “I heard a Fly Buzz- When I Died” is gloomy and calm. Dickinson was always a calm and lonely person because she never fit in with other she never said much so she was calm, she had no reason to be roused, and she was always a soothing person. I heard a fly buzz theme is a morality. Dickinson describes in this poem lot of things about death.
The subject of death, including her own was a very prevalent theme in Emily Dickinson’s poems and letters. Some may find her preoccupation with death morbid, but this was not unusual for her time period. The mindset during Ms. Dickinson’s time was that of being prepared to die, in the 19th century people died of illness and accidents at an alarming rate, not to mention the Civil War had a high number of casualties, she also lived 15 years of her youth next to a cemetery. Dickinson’s view on death was never one of something to be feared she almost romanized death, in her poem “Because I Could not Stop for Death”, she actually personifies death while narrating from beyond the grave. In the first stanza she states “I could not stop for
Analysis of I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died and Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson
In the poem “I heard a fly buzz – when I died” Emily Dickinson writes about the physical process of dying. Death is described as a sensation. A dying person can feel the world fading away from them as they sign away all their personal belongings. In lines 2&3 a stillness is described. The stillness is a representation of the visitors coming to mourn the death of the speaker.
One thing that Emily Dickinson did was she introduced a new style of writing. She liked to express her emotion and thoughts through her writing. This taught future writers to expresses these emotions in their writing and Emily was a key example of how successful it could be. Her poetry often reflected her loneliness, she had a rough time growing up so her poetry often reflected this. Her use of words and imaginary
Emily Dickinson portrays death in her poems in a few different ways. For example, in her poem “I Felt a Funeral in my Brain” she was portraying that her mind was dying, and was having a funeral for her mind. She says at one point "And then a Plank in Reason, broke, And I dropped down, and down-"(p 87) which I think means that as she was being lowered into the ground, that her mind was done thinking, reasoning and understanding. In her poem “Because I could not stop for Death”, she could not stop for death but death was going to stop for her. He came in the carriage to take her to her grave. She says “We slowly drove – He knew no haste, And I had put away, My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility” (p 91), and by this I think she means that
The way that emily dickinson writes her poems is in a depressing form. She is talking about death and depression and loneliness. She also tends to use a lot of capitalization to the words that she wants you to see and recognize.she is using a lot of punctuation in her poem as well; she uses a comma in almost every sentence. most of her poem seemed negative to me.
Firstly, the plot of Dickinson’s poem is persuades and takes the reader imagery through different settings and times. In her first poem, “Because I could Not Stop For Death” Emily talks about death and how she experienced it on her own. The second poem was also written about the author’s death and its title “I heard a fly buzz— when I died” leaves a gray area for discussion. The third poem “I felt Funeral In my Brain” Emily Dickinson describing what it would be like to experience her own funeral in consciousness, while her body was dead. Each stanzas of these poems takes reader to a new part of the poet’s journey with death. In the title of three poems, Dickinson states her subject capturing the reader on an adventure of death. The first poem uses the elements of nature represent a cycle of life. The weather is used to represent various life stages in the poem “Because I could not stop for Death”. This poem describes the process of dying right up to and past the moment of death. The speaker, walking along the road of life is picked up and given a carriage ride out of town to her destination, the graveyard and death. In the first poem the death takes the shape of a gentleman, a grim reaper, his paying a visit is normally never welcome by the normal human who finds him at the door. In the poem the woman welcomes him and is going on a date with death. She embraces death and wished to marry him. The speaker and Death pass by the school, the fields of grain and the setting sun,
“Emily Dickinson stands among the greatest poets produced by America and perhaps the English-speaking world. Her voice and verbal artistry are unique, and her themes are both ageless and universal” (Cornelius). Emily Dickinson was a poet who devoted all her time to her profession: the art of writing. Dickinson utilized the experiences of her life in her poems leaving a lasting impact on literature. Dickinson’s perspective of controversial subject matters including death is revealed in her writing. A common theme in her poems is mortality. Her views of death and spirituality differs from numerous individuals who picture death as ghastly and the end. Notably, the poem, “Because I could not stop for death”, unveils Dickinson’s attitude on inescapable mortality and the afterlife. In Dickinson’s poem, the speaker tells the journey of how she was occupied when a kind gentleman named Death appears in a carriage to take her for a ride with another ride who goes by the name Immortality (“Because I could not stop for Death”) . In Emily Dickinson’s poem, Dickinson incorporates the use personification and symbols to describe her journey with/ to death.