Emily Dickinson’s Portrayal of Death

Authors, poets, and artists have been depicting death for millennia. Humans seem to have a fascination with the inescapable nature death and it has been portrayed in countless ways. Emily Dickinson wrote extensively about death and impermanence in her poetry. Dickinson’s two poems “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died” and “Because I could not Stop for Death” serve as two of her most famous interpretations of death. Death is portrayed differently in each poem which shows the vast range of emotions and perceptions that each person carries regarding death.

A large portion of “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died” is devoted to the experience of Dickinson’s loved ones as they gather around her death bed. Dickinson describes the hushed reverence and mournful tears that are commonly associated with those grieving the imminent death of a loved one. Dickinson also describes willing her earthly possessions to those she is leaving behind. Dickinson’s personal experience of death in the poem is related to the reader through the image of a buzzing fly. Dickinson (1924) writes about the moment of her death:

There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,

Between the light and me;

And then the windows failed and then,

I could not see to see. (p. 242)

By relating death to a fly, Dickinson reveals the changing perception of death that she experienced throughout her life. Normally, a small fly is nothing more than a slight distraction which mirrors a person’s perception of death while they are young. When death is not close, it is inconsequential, yet it is still there like a small fly buzzing around a room. However, when death is close, this fly which was once a minor distraction seems to grow and now has the capacity to block out the light from the windows. Dickinson shows that, although we do not dwell on our own death when it is not expected to come soon, it is always there. Furthermore, as we grow older, death comes to the forefront of our thoughts because we know that it is inescapable and imminent.

Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not Stop for Death” presents the reader with a different attribute of death. Dickinson’s point of view in this poem, unlike “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died”, is from the perspective of a person who has already died. Death is depicted as a gentleman who comes to carry Dickinson to the afterlife in a carriage. Death is not the end of Dickinson’s experience. As she rides in the carriage she describes what she sees out of the window:

We passed the school, where children strove

At recess, in the ring;

We passed the fields of gazing grain,

We passed the setting sun. (Dickinson, 1924, p. 190)

These images represent the different stages of her life. The children playing at recess symbolize her childhood, the fields of grain represent middle age, and the setting sun is a symbol of her elderly years. Death is merely the last stage in a person’s life cycle. This poem mainly differs from “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died” because Dickinson has included a promise that death is not the end. She rides to her grave with Death and she rests there for eternity. It is unclear whether Dickinson believes that the afterlife is more than just waiting in limbo. However, the fact that death is not the end of a person’s experience cannot be denied. The differing point of view in each poem is the reason for this discrepancy. Dickinson speaks from beyond the veil of death in “Because I could not Stop for Death” and, therefore, she is privy to an experience that the speaker in “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died” is on the verge of experiencing.

In conclusion, Emily Dickinson’s two poems “Because I could not Stop for Death” and “I heard a Fly Buzz When I Died” both cover different perspectives of death. The poems are written from opposite sides of the mortal coil, and this allows Dickinson to create two varying interpretations of what death truly is. However, the main similarity in both poems is that Dickinson reminds the reader that death is a part of life. It is always there waiting for its time to come. No matter how a person perceives death, it is immutable, inescapable, and permanently severs a body’s bond to its mortal coil.

Reference

Dickinson, E. (1924). Complete poems. n.p. Retrieved from http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/dickinson/dickinson.pdf