Journal 28

Throughout Emily Dickinson's life she lived near a cemetery and this influenced some of her poems and the themes of them. Most of the poems go around the central theme of nature, death, and other natural ideas. She discusses the fly and uses the fly as a thing to show the length of time the body could have been suffering. Death to Emily Dickinson is something that is scary and it involves suffering. This person in the poem is probably dying and the fly is just waiting for them to die so that he can eat parts of the body. The last line talks about everything going black and that this is truly the end of the person's life and the end to the quiet lonely suffering that they are going through. The fly also interrupts the end of the Emily Dickinson's death and this is tragic she wants to die alone and not have to worry about anything interrupting the peace of death. The cemetery is a peaceful place that is always old looking and quiet and that is something that Emily Dickinson could see from her house. Emily Dickinson probably imagined death as a peaceful and quiet thing, but instead her death is interrupted by this annoying fly. " I heard a fly buzz when I died" is the poem that is somewhat Emily Dickinson's idea of death but the interrupted death by this stupid fly. The fly could interrupt the movement of the soul and send her down and maybe not allow her into Heaven. The fly may symbolize the devil and that he is taking her soul away from the grace of Heaven. The quietness of death is the peaceful passing that may be taken away from the people with the sound of the fly buzzing during their final breathes. Emily Dickinson believes that death should be quiet and peaceful and still. Death is a natural part of life and it can not be avoided but should be a simple end that does not hurt.