The fly and 465

Geoff Eng 219 3/4/00 The Fly and #465 Emily Dickinson in her poem #465, covers the subject of death in a way that I have not seen before. She delves right into the last sounds she heard when the narrator died, which was a fly buzzing. The last actions of this world are concluded by the assigning of "keepsakes", the last few tears while waiting "the King". And now, in the midst of this silence, Emily chooses to introduce …

…kept the ending open so as not to alienate her readers. The fact that much of the poem's power comes from such an open ending is, I believe, almost incidental. The whole point about the next life is that we do not know and cannot know what it is like or even if it exists. And that's what makes life so interesting. Think how boring it would be if we actually knew all the answers!