Poem 465 treats the subjective experience of death, a recurring theme in Dickinson’s poems. Her fascination with death could be a product of a depression or a deeper attraction.  Perhaps she wanted to study death, what it was like, and more importantly what it meant to die. In poem 465 Dickinson is trying to show us what dying is like from the perspective of the one dying, which is unique in literature because dying people aren’t around to write about their deaths.

In the opening stanza, “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died…” , we are invited to the narrator’s death bed, setting up our study of death (1).  There was a “Stillness in the Air”; the moment of death is somber as with heavy silence (3). There was a fly in the room.  What was it doing there? And what does it signify?

The second stanza introduces us to the audience of the death, who already accepted this fate. The spectators had finished crying: “Eyes around—had wrung them dry” (5).  They were waiting for the death to ensue. They were waiting for the “King”, meaning God, to arrive and take the soul (7). Dickinson is painting a picture of a serene, holy, and special moment.

In the third stanza, we see that all of the mundane matters have been handled.  The dying one has disposed of worldly possessions, and is seemingly finished with this world and its trivialities. The death is going to be a divine moment, special and extraordinary.  Then “There interposed a Fly,” getting in the way of the special moment (12).

In the final stanza, we see the fly and its “stumbling Buzz” annoying and ruining the special moment (13). The fly blocks the “light”, meaning the fly is blocking heaven. The narrator sees this fly and realizes that death is no more special than any other moment.  The fly signifies the mundane and the normal, and that the moment of death is not as holy as it seems. The window doesn’t open and the fly can’t leave because the mundane is never over. Death isn’t a stepping stone to heaven, but just the last step of life.

Dickinson shows the apparent completeness of death by having a perfect rhyme in the last stanza, “me” and “see”, which gives closure to the poem, but then she ends the poem with a dash, telling us that maybe it isn’t over, maybe death isn’t the end (14, 16).