資料彙整   /   作家  /  Emily  Dickinson  愛蜜麗•狄更森  /  作品
I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died
作者Author  /  Emily  Dickinson  愛蜜麗•狄更森

I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died

 

Study Questions

 
  Understanding and Analysis  
  1. Who is the speaker of this poem? Where is she? Is she living or dead? Why is the poem written in the past tense?
  2. What are the connotations for the word fly? How are some of those connotations helpful for understanding the poem? What does the fly mean?
  3. The second and third stanzas show more clearly what moment of death the poem is about?  Can you describe it?  And the attitudes of the speaker as well as those around her?
  4. Why does the speaker describe the sound of the fly in the final stanza as being "With Blue--uncertain stumbling Buzz"?
  5. The last line contains what seems to be a contradiction. Explain the possible meanings of the last two lines.
  6. Application--Why does Dickinson write so much about death (Cf. "Because I could not stop for Death" p. 741)?  How is her view of death different from, or similar to, yours?
  7. More about literary techniques.
 
 
 
Numbers refer to Poem Numbers 
465.  It is helpful in reading this poem to be aware of two aspects of the Puritan tradition that  
persisted through Dickinson's day. First, keeping watch at a deathbed was standard practice.  
Close scrutiny of the process of dying, and of the corpse, was considered a perfectly natural  
and healthy activity that would advance the spiritual state of the spectator. Second, in  
Dickinson's time there were many popular poems describing death sentimentally and  
devotionally as a difficult but ultimately redemptive passage to heaven. For example, here  
is a description of a dying eye from "The Lost Sister" by Dickinson's popular contemporary  
Lydia Sigourney: 

It's gathered film 

Kindled one moment with a sudden glow 

Of tearless agony,--and fearful pangs, 

Racking the rigid features, told how strong 

A mother's love doth root itself. One cry 

Of bitter anguish, blent with fervent prayer, 

Went up to Heaven,--and, as it cadence sank 

Her spirit entered there. 

Quoted in Barton Levi St. Armand, Emily Dickinson and Her Culture: The Soul's Society  
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984) 58.  

How is Dickinson's poem similar to Sigourney's? How is it markedly different?  

 

 
   
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