Emily Dickinson's "I Heard a Fly Buzz": Death and Perception
This essay analyzes Emily Dickinson's poem "I heard a Fly buzz" through the dual lenses of scientific objectivity and subjective human consciousness. Drawing on scholarship by Eric Wilson and Michael Ryan, the essay examines how Dickinson uses a fly buzzing near a dying narrator as both a clinical detail of the body approaching death and a symbol of humanity's restless search for meaning. The essay argues that the speaker's post-mortem narrative position transforms ordinary sensory perceptions into ultimate, final experiences, elevating the fly to a near-totemic symbol. The poem is read as an infinite loop in which a ghost preserves the last moment of consciousness before death erases all perception.
- Introduction: The Fly and the Moment of Death: Thesis: fly symbolizes banality and meaning of death
- Scientific Objectivity and Subjective Consciousness: Wilson's dual stance framework applied to the poem
- The Post-Mortal Speaker and the Ghost's Final Perceptions: Dead narrator transforms sensory details into final meaning
- Conclusion: The Infinite Loop of Consciousness: Ghost preserves last consciousness in poem's eternal loop
✍️ How to write this paper — guide, tools & examples ▾
What makes this paper effective
- It sustains a clear dual-reading framework — scientific objectivity versus subjective consciousness — and applies it consistently to specific lines of the poem throughout the analysis.
- It integrates secondary scholarship (Wilson and Ryan) purposefully, using each critic to open up a distinct interpretive layer rather than simply summarizing their views.
- The concept of the post-mortem speaker as a "ghost forever trapped" in the final moment is an original and well-developed claim that gives the analysis a unifying thesis.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates close reading in conjunction with critical synthesis. The student moves between direct quotation of Dickinson's lines and scholarly commentary, then builds an independent interpretive argument on top of both. This layered approach — text, critic, original claim — is a hallmark of strong undergraduate literary analysis.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens with a thesis-bearing introduction that names the poem's central tension. The second paragraph introduces Wilson's framework and applies it to the fly as a literal and symbolic object. The third paragraph deepens the argument using Ryan's observation about the grammatical anomaly of a dead speaker, developing the "ghost" reading. The conclusion synthesizes the dual-reading framework into the image of an infinite loop, giving the paper a satisfying sense of closure without overclaiming.
Introduction: The Fly and the Moment of Death
In her poem "I heard a Fly buzz," Emily Dickinson explores the moment just before the death of the narrator, as she watches a fly buzz about in the final moments before sight fails her. In comparing the human experience to the buzzing of a fly in the face of a mortal curtain, Dickinson presents a simultaneously clinical and emotionally subjective consideration of death — one that examines the minute physical details of a scene in order to extract some ultimate meaning before the finality of death. The fly serves as a reminder of the banality of death as well as the importance of the meaning bestowed by human perception.
Works Cited
Dickinson, Emily. "I heard a Fly buzz." Poets.org. Poets.org, 2011. Web. 5 May 2011. <
Ryan, Michael. "How to Use a Fly: A Column." American Poetry Review. 33.2 (2004): 15–17. Print.
Wilson, Eric. "Dickinson's Chemistry of Death." American Transcendental Quarterly. 12.1 (1998): 27–43. Print.
Create your account
Always verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.