Emily Dickinson's "I Heard a Fly Buzz"

<Tab/>Emily Dickinson's "I Heard a Fly Buzz" is a poem describing the event of one person's death. The poem is written in the first person which shows that the narrator has already died and is recounting the experience. The speaker is laying her deathbed, with family and friends standing all around, waiting for the inevitable. She wants to make her way to the afterlife, but a fly distracts her. As …

…she believes she will be going to a better place. However, a fly interferes with her plans of going to the afterlife. The fly prevents the speaker from seeing the light, and as she dies her soul drifts off into nothingness with no afterlife to travel to. Dickinson uses this poem to show that the only sure thing we know about life after death is that flies will one day, follow us to the grave.