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Analyzing Emily Dickinson's Poems During her lifetime, Emily Dickinson was unknown to the general audience as a poet, and only after her death the works she has created became popular. Nowadays Emily Dickinson is recognized as one of the greatest American poets, and she is especially famous as a lyric poet. Many of Emily's biographers call her eccentric and psychologically unbalanced; she did not have that many friends as a child and preferred to spend her time alone. As a recluse Emily Dickinson frequently stayed in her room and wrote poetry. Critics believe that the two poems that I will elaborate on within the course of this report I Felt a Funeral in my Brain and I Heard a Fly Buzz-when I died are so mysterious due to her withdrawal from society. Through the effective use of theme, style, and setting, Emily Dickinson's poetry speaks so powerfully that is captures her insights and helps her audience to relive their experiences with her intensity and her emotional clarity.
In I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died we are introduced to the theme of death. We receive the image of death by the description in the first stanza, the stillness round my form was like the stillness in the air between the heaves of storm. (Guthrie, p. 44) This stillness, like the stillness in the eye of the storm, does not change its surroundings, it is now constant. This is the image of death that is given, but the description goes on with: and breaths were gathering surely for that last onset, when the king be witnessed in his power. (Guthrie, p. 44) The image of gathering breath to go and meet a king, suggests that they must have a lot of explaining to do. The speaker appears to be preparing to meet God. In the third stanza, the speaker says, I willed my keepsakes, signed away what portion of me I could make assignable, this could speak of the will that the speaker made out. (Guthrie, p. 47) However, this is where the fly intervenes. If the text is taken chronologically, then the speaker may already be dead, and perhaps giving of herself to the king. -- and then interposed a fly, with blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz, the fact that the fly is blue may suggest royalty, perhaps the fly is a type of king also. (Guthrie, p. 48) However, the fly is not perfect as it has an uncertain, stumbling buzz. (Guthrie, p. 48) This fly may be symbolic of all the stumbling that the speaker has done, and we see its affect in the last 3 lines between the light and me: and then the windows failed, and then I could not see to see. (Guthrie, p. 48) In this poem Dickinson uses language to describe the experience of death, that image seems to be one of frailty, that even a fly could have a profound effect, and the theme of death is prevailing throughout the poem.
The theme of death is also present in I felt a funeral in my brain. In the first stanza, the speaker talks of mourners, to and fro, kept treading, treading, till it seemed that sense was breaking through. (Mitchell, p. 112) This may be referring to the epiphanies that people often have when they are faced with death. In the second stanza there is a beating that made the speakers mind go numb. In the next stanza, space begins to toll. Then, in the forth stanza, she is an ear, and the heavens a bell. All these stimuli, all of these things are affecting the speaker, making her progress.
And then, in the last stanza, a plank of reason broke and I dropped down, and down, and hit a world at every plunge, and finished knowing then. () In this poem, Emily Dickinson makes the comparison of death to learning, and then eventually after death finishes knowing. This is much like the end of the speaker in the poem I heard a fly buzz when I died. The speakers in both of these poems have an end to light or knowledge, however in the first the culprit is a fly. Emily Dickinson has a rather peculiar style, and it is evident in her poem I Heard a Fly Buzz-when I died.
Her usage of punctuation is interesting; it helps to logically emphasize the flow of the poems lines. In the first stanza, she intentionally repeats words and phrases, and it makes this first introductory stanza somewhat confusing to the reader. Throughout the whole poem, the words she uses at first do not seem to go alone with each other, however after one reads the poem completely, it is evident that the style deployed by Emily emphasizes her emotions and helps the readers to feel what she tries to tell in her poem. Her style in this particular poem is also attractive because the poem does not have one and only meaning it can be interpreted differently by different readers and that is certainly an advantage. The style of I felt a Funeral, in my Brain is also very interesting, although somewhat different. The first line of the poem is I felt a Funeral, in my Brain.
This is the title of the piece because Dickinson did not title her work, so when it was published, the first line of each piece was used as the title. This line describes a complete mess in the speakers mind. This so-called funeral is just tearing her apart. The repeated usage of and at the beginning of the line makes the poem flow smoothly, it creates an illusion of something continuous, and that is what Emily Dickinson wanted.
The word then that ends the entire poem is also a very interesting trick, it somewhat leaves the reader uncertain about the final meaning of the poem. The setting in I Heard a Fly Buzz-when I died can be derived from closely analyzing the poem. In this poem, a woman is lying in bed with her family standing all around waiting for her death. The first two stanzas and part of the third, except for the weird first line, present death as a momentous event. Death not only affects the dying person, but all the people around as well, "the eyes around had wrung them dry. " (Guthrie, p. 54) While the family is waiting for her to pass on, she herself is waiting for .".. the King... (Guthrie, p. 54) Later as the woman dies, her eyes (or windows as they are referred to in the poem) fail, then she ."..
could not see to see-." (Guthrie, p. 55) When she says this, what she seems to mean is she could not see any of the afterlife or King she expected to be there. The last thing that the speaker hears is a "blue uncertain stumbling buzz, " which is the complete opposite of the nice martial music associated with the entrance of the king. Then the woman's soul drifts off into nothingness with no afterlife to travel to. The setting of I Felt a Funeral in my Brain is rather unusual; it depicts both the atmosphere of the real funeral and something that goes on in the poets mind.
This funeral seems to be racing over and over in the poets mind. As the piece continues, there is talk about mourners going to and fro, who are treading and treading. It can be thought as these memories that are racing through her head. Mourners are those who express their grief or sorrow. So these mourners are the ones at the funeral.
And because of them, the sorrow is showing. The next line states that the sense was breaking through. Therefore it is all coming back to the poet. This can allow the poet to know what is going on with her, and maybe comprehend it as well. The next stanza begins with them all being seated at this service, like a drum. So now all these mourners are at the funeral sitting in sorrow for the loss of someone obviously close to them.
This speaker describes the service to be like some kind of drum that keeps beating and beating until their mind goes numb. I am guessing that memories are going over her mind. Then the poet heard them lift a box. (Mitchell, p. 115) This would be the pallbearers lifting the casket at this funeral. The speaker says that it creaks across their soul. Maybe this might have made him or her feel uncomfortable in this kind of situation. One can only tell how the feel with the loss of someone important in their life.
Stanza four begins with all the Heavens were a bell (Mitchell, p. 117) Could this be a good place for his or her lost love to go, but still too distant from the speaker? Only the speaker knows. And the stanza ends with the speaker being in silence all alone. Death forces itself upon the dying leaving them no control. Dickinson freely speaks about death and her views about it. (Farr, p. 77) She tricks the reader into believing that they are the one dying by using such figurative language and by forcing the reader to use their vivid imagination. To determine which poem believes in what, one must dig through the clues in each and read between the lines.
Emily Dickinson was a wonderful American poet and it was unfortunate that a lot of her work was not discovered until later on. This piece is a wonderful example of her work. I feel that her poems represent a kind of struggle that everyone goes through when they lose someone special. Words Count: 1, 615.
Bibliography: Farr, J. Emily Dickinson: A Collection of Critical Essays. Prentice Hall, 1995. Guthrie, J.
Emily Dickinson's Vision: Illness and Identity in her Poetry. University of Florida Press, 1998. Mitchell, D. Emily Dickinson: Monarch of Perception. University of Massachusetts Press, 2000.
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