Analysis Of Emily Dickinson's Poem 465
In her poem #465, Emily Dickinson’s speaker allows the reader to experience an ironic reversal of conventional expectations of the moment of death in the mid-1800s, as the speaker finds nothing but an eerie darkness at the end of her life.
Most importantly, events that occur at the moment of the speaker’s death demonstrate the eerie and simple death she experiences. During the moment of the speaker’s death, she “heard a Fly buzz” (1). After the speaker’s death, there was no grand gateway to the heavens, as what Christian families in the mid-1800s believed. There was only a fly buzzing around the room. Dickinson’s symbol of the fly as the simple reality of death reveals the reality of death, as flies are often associated with flying around rotting
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For instance, while the speaker anticipates her majestic departure with Christ, “There interposed a Fly” (12). Here, Dickinson’s symbolic representation of the fly reveals the speaker’s ironic death. The fly, representing the eerie darkness and reality of death, interrupted the speaker’s magnificent death and replaced it with a quick, meaningless passing. Rather than experiencing a revelation or departing this world with God, she passes while hearing the buzzing of a fly. This irony occurs by the lackluster reality of the great expectations of both the speaker and the mourners. Furthermore, the speaker’s death did not occur in a splendid fashion; one moment the speaker was alive, and then the next “the Windows failed” (15). The window of life had closed all of a sudden for the speaker, leaving her with a death in darkness. Dickinson’s inclusion of the sudden yet expected ending, which fails to include the speaker exiting on a chariot up to heaven, ironically demonstrates the harsh reality of death. The speaker only experiences unnerving darkness after death rather than the expected light and bright heaven. The speaker’s and the mourner’s expectations of death were ironically shattered with her simple
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