In my search for information that would help me better understand Emily Dickinson’s poetry, I found a web page written by Lilia Melani, a member of the English faculty at the State University of New York. While the site discusses several of Dickinson’s poems, I specifically chose to focus in on “I heard a fly buzz–when I died–.” This page is obviously intended to guide students to their own conclusions when reading Dickinson’s poems, and I felt that it was very useful in helping me form my own conclusions about this specific poem.
There are two main observations that Melani makes about the symbols in this poem. First by comparison to the image of the fly. A fly, Melani says, can stand for many things. The first fly often signifies Beelzebub, or Satan. Second, the fly is also commonly associated with caries, as flies feed on rotting meat. Then Melanus points to “the King” (1304). He says that the king can refer to either “God, Jesus, or death” (2).
The different images of the fly and the king in this poem can lead readers to two conclusions. The first is that Dickinson waits for the king, signifying God, to arrive at her death and take her to the “Concussion” (1304) of eternity. But the Fly, or Satan, seems to signify that she will come to hell rather than to heaven as she had hoped. flying at the end of the return is a symbol of the non-existence of eternity. Because the fly is an image of nature that is often associated with carrion, Dickinson contradicts the belief in the existence of God and heaven.
To be honest, when I first read this poem, I didn’t know what it was. I did not know that the fly was a common symbol of the devil, and that information alone opened my eyes to one meaning. Once I understood that the fly and the king were the main symbols in the poem, I was able to develop other meanings related to the poem. It was also very helpful that Melani offered different interpretations rather than just one, allowing me to make up my own mind about the meaning of the poem. information She is a faculty member in the English department at CUNY, and this page is written expressly to facilitate discussion in the literature category.
