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The Fly - William Blake

In this poem poet goes into philosophy of life and death from everyday incident. He mistakenly kills a fly and then he goes on thinking.
On a sunny day, a little fly enjoying the warm weather unknowingly annoys the poet. The poet in rage shakes his hand and fly gets killed. After murdering the fly, the poet's heart repents and starts thinking in a different angle. He continues asking himself isn’t the fly a man like me. He feels the fly also had a life similar to him and he had ended its life.
The poet compares this incident to man’s death. Death occurs to a man on an unknown date, but it happens so sudden. No one knows who is taking away man’s life. The poet says he enjoys his life singing, dancing and drinking. He enjoys his life till someone takes away his life, very similar to his thoughtless hand killing a fly.
The poet clearly depicts the difference between a man and a fly i.e thoughts. Man can think that is his strength. If he cannot reason he would be just ordinary as a fly. By saying thought is life the poet means when thoughts in a man cease, he is no more. He also says a man thinks of death. He knows that death is certain. And everyman suffers because of his thoughts, confusions, displeasure, dissatisfaction, pride, ego everything arises when man thinks. The poet says if he needs liberation his thoughts must die and that happens when a man dies.
After seeing the end of the happy fly the poet questions himself whether he will be happy when he lives or dies. Here he compares man with a fly teaching us how to live our life carefree. The fly never cared what would happen next. The fly was happy when he lived and he didn’t worry or was scared of death.

Comments

  1. English LiteratureSeptember 18, 2020 at 8:38 AM

    Thanks for sharing such a nice content. Your post was really good. Some ideas can be made. About English literature. Further, you can access this site to learn more about William Blake Precursor of Romantic Poetry

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