Point of View

The poem is told from the first-person perspective of a deceased narrator. The speaker is unnamed and referred to throughout the poem as “I.” She is the sole narrator of the poem, and it is worth mentioning that the gender of the speaker is not explicitly stated. For writing purposes, many people assume the speaker is female since the poem is written by a woman. The framework of the poem is a posthumous recollection of the events directly preceding the speaker’s death. The first-person perspective remains mostly consistent throughout the poem.

In the first, third, and fourth stanzas, Dickinson maintains a first-person point of view. In the first stanza, the speaker tells us that she heard a fly buzz just before she died, and she notes the stillness of the room in which she spent her last moments. At this point, the viewpoint shifts...