fly

Question 1

‘I heard a Fly buzz-when I died’

Answer 1

caesura differentiates juxtapositions of life + death, noise + silence, profundity + mundanity,
onomatopoeia and trochaic stress evokes disorder of the fly, disturbs solemnity puritan of GD ritual

Question 2

‘was like the stillness in the Air/ Between the Heaves of storm’

Answer 2

metaphor and long vowel sounds accentuatelife + afterlife= intense storms compare to death= still point in between

Question 3

‘the Eyes around- had wrung them dry’

Answer 3

synedoche ‘eyes;= ‘Is’ the mourners/ ‘wrung dry’ both sincerity of mourning but also peformativity of spectatorship of visual (mourners are conforming to death bed rituals.)

Question 4

‘Breaths were gathering firm’ +’last onset’ +’The king’ + ‘Be witnessed’

Answer 4

‘firm’= Mourner’s stained breathing, anticipation of death =palable
divine election= imminent (King=God)
speakers Christian confidence that death= ‘last’ beginning (immortality will soon arrive)

Question 5

‘signed away/ what operation of me/ Assignable’

Answer 5

word choices speaker shows reassuring prepardness for death by ‘signing’ away possession in will; ‘what portion’ indicates belief in immortal, intangible soul reserved for god

Question 6

‘I could not see to see-‘

Answer 6

cacophonous verb and caesurae evoke flys obnoxious interruption + speakers failurre to maintain focus on divine ‘light’/ may indicate Dickinson questioning of puritan cult of good death rituals to provide certainty + comfort of death.
synaesthesia= senses are distorting, consciousness collapsing

Question 7

final comment on the fly as a metaphor

Answer 7

compressed metaphor human lide= insignificant, banal, pedestrian (like a fly) OR putrefaction of death OR as an obscurer of vision, fly represents fact that humanity’s understanding of death is always occluded