I heard a Fly buzz — when I died

Emily Dickinson’s letters reveal a loving and family-oriented individual. “It is a sweet feeling to know that you are missed and that your memory is precious at home,” she wrote in an 1847 letter while attending Mount Holyoke. “Only to think that in two and half weeks I shall be at my own dear home again” (Dickinson, Emily. Emily Dickinson Letters. Edited by Emily Fragos, Alfred A. Knopf, 2011). Like her, neither of Dickinson’s siblings moved away from Amherst. All three chose to stay at one of the two houses on the family property. The Homestead seemed to possess a loving atmosphere. Dickinson’s father notably gifted her any book she desired. She was famously close with her siblings and sister-in-law. Dickinson even offered her cousins to stay with her after they became orphaned in 1863. The lack of explicitly defined relationships within “I heard a Fly Buzz—when I died—” seems strange from a biographical context. Readers must consider Dickinson’s typical enigmatic writing style and her admission that her poems’ speakers did not always represent her. However, her life and values still shaped her poems, so it remains important to analyze the ways Dickinson’s