Emily Dickinson Funeral

In this poem “I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain”, Emily Dickinson seems to be suffering a traumatic experience or situation at that time, difficult to control inside her brain. She attempts to explain this painful emotion through this poem using a variety of literary techniques that include metaphor, symbolism, personification and others. It is clear that Dickinson is not using her sense of reasoning in this poem, she seems gone from the world around her, as if her mind state is deteriorating and she is going from sanity to insanity. From my point of view of the poem, Emily seems to be trying to convey readers her own tragic experience from the perspective of a dead person that is still able to use some of her senses and is conscious the whole time narrating the poem inside a coffin. However, it 's still not clear whether the speaker is living or dead, but she is definitely afraid and disturbed of what will happen when she finally loses her sanity.

Emily Dickinson’s poem, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes-“is a profound portrayal of the debilitating process of grief human beings undergo when confronted with a horrific tragedy. The response to that ultimate pain is the predominance of numbness, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes-/The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs-“(1-2). This is a poem that must be read slowly to become saturated in the melancholy, the dehumanization of suffering as it affects each aspect of the body without reference to the chaotic emotionality of it. The abundance of metaphors within Dickinson’s poem provides the means to empathize the necessity of numbness. It is also through the use of punctuation and capitalization, depicting the presence of a

Death is a controversial and sensitive subject. When discussing death, several questions come to mind about what happens in our afterlife, such as: where do you go and what do you see? Emily Dickinson is a poet who explores her curiosity of death and the afterlife through her creative writing ability. She displays different views on death by writing two contrasting poems: one of a softer side and another of a more ridged and scary side. When looking at dissimilar observations of death it can be seen how private and special it is; it is also understood that death is inevitable so coping with it can be taken in different ways. Emily Dickinson’s poems “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” and “I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died” show both

In Patricia Engle’s review of Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I Could Not Stop For Death”, Engle argues that Dickinson’s poem employs Death as a lover who takes whomever is reading the poem to “heaven”, if you will. She also posits the idea that our eventual death is just a state of mind and we do not all follow the same path to reach Death. The poem, at its core, is about the visceral fear of Death and not wanting to die. I disagree with Engle’s assessment. Engle’s take on Dickinson’s poem is an inaccurate one because it explains that Dickinson does not seem to be afraid of death, that Dickinson is very spiritually aware and even accepting of her eventual fate, and that Dickinson, or the speaker of the poem, has accepted death so he has “stopped” for her.

Emily Dickinson is one of the most important American poets of the 1800s. Dickinson, who was known to be quite the recluse, lived and died in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts, spending the majority of her days alone in her room writing poetry. What few friends she did have would testify that Dickinson was a rather introverted and melancholy person, which shows in a number of her poems where regular themes include death and mortality. One such poem that exemplifies her “dark side” is, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”. In this piece, Dickinson tells the story of a soul’s transition into the afterlife showing that time and death have outright power over our lives and can make what was once significant become meaningless.

Though death is accepted by some, others dread the idea of it. Those that are terrified of death can become absolutely consumed with horror. The poem “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain” by Emily Dickinson describes a scene in which the character is suffering through mental deterioration and lacks the ability to control their emotions. The poem depicts the weakening of the character’s mind through the imagined occurrence of a funeral within her brain. The distressful situation of the funeral caused “mourners, to and fro, [to keep] treading, treading” (Source B). Once the mourners were seated for the funeral to begin, the “service like a drum, kept beating, beating, till I thought my mind was going numb” (Source B) and the agitated mood of the funeral increased. The alarming beat of the drum caused such commotion that the character became dazed and traumatized further. The

Emily Dickinson concentrates many of her poems on the theme of death, predominantly her own. These “poems about death confront its grim reality with honesty, humor, curiosity, and above all a refusal to be comforted (“Emily Dickinson 1830-1886” 1659). While this was not an out of the ordinary topic during the American Romantic era, Dickinson seemed near obsessive in her focus. Additionally, Dickinson seems questionable in her thoughts on religion, another theme popular during the American Romantic era. Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for death” and “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” both explicitly examine the concept of death, the afterlife, and the author’s obsession with the melancholy.

“I Felt a Funeral in my Brain”, by Emily Dickenson, is a poem of despair, narrating the experience and feelings associated with sinking into an episode of depression, and arguably losing her sanity in the process. Depression is defined as feelings of severe despondency and dejection, and is described as a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest, affecting how you think, feel, and behave. Creating difficulty in maintaining day to day life, and feeling as though life is not worth living.

“The straightforward mention of ‘reason’ suffering some kind of misfortune makes it hard not to conclude that Dickinson is specifically referring to some kind of madness. She is not using a metaphor of a storm in this poem. She is openly declaring that she felt as if something in her brain has died” (Hart, Par. 9). While Dickinson tends to use metaphors in most of her poems to describe her emotions, the only metaphorical reference in this poem is the actual funeral itself. The funeral is simply a representation of the feelings of depression taking over her brain. More symbolism can be interpreted in this poem when considering the confined life that Dickinson lived. She spent much of her time in her room, isolating herself from the world and writing poetry. As the casket is part of a funeral service, it can be interpreted that it is a resemblance of her mind and body being trapped inside a restricted place, where she cannot escape. From an article written by Eleanor Wilner, she describes how Dickinson’s secluded life contributed to her pains in life and desire to write poetry. “The struggle involved in such a total project of suppression is reflected in many of her poems, like the often quoted ‘I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,’ which suggest a mind threatened with dissolution, turning it on itself, walling itself up as she did in her father’s house, using

The subject of death, including her own was a very prevalent theme in Emily Dickinson’s poems and letters. Some may find her preoccupation with death morbid, but this was not unusual for her time period. The mindset during Ms. Dickinson’s time was that of being prepared to die, in the 19th century people died of illness and accidents at an alarming rate, not to mention the Civil War had a high number of casualties, she also lived 15 years of her youth next to a cemetery. Dickinson’s view on death was never one of something to be feared she almost romanized death, in her poem “Because I Could not Stop for Death”, she actually personifies death while narrating from beyond the grave. In the first stanza she states “I could not stop for

Have you ever lost someone in your life who was extremely important to you? Did you feel like once the grieving was over the world continued to move on? In the poem [I heard a fly buzz] by Emily Dickinson, Dickinson ponders the topic of death and the impact it has on its surroundings. The poem takes place from beyond the grave in which the narrator is in a silent room interrupted by the buzzing of a fly: “I heard a fly buzz/when I died”(Line 1). Many people are in the room mourning over the loss of the dead person: “The Eyes around--had wrung them dry/Breaths were gathering firm” (Lines 5-6). It is assumed that God is taking her away to her afterlife: “/when the King/be witnessed in the room.” Through point of view, imagery, and diction, Dickinson conveys the speaker’s feelings towards death and how people react to it, revealing the beliefs that people will never truly

In the poem "I Felt a Funeral in My Brain" Emily Dickinson exposes a person's intense anguish and suffering as they sink into a state of extreme madness. The poem is a carefully constructed analysis of the speaker's own mental experience. Dickinson uses the image of a funeral-service to symbolize the death of the speaker's sanity. The poem is terrifying for the reader as it depicts a realization of the collapse of one's mental stability, which is horrifying for most. The reader experiences the horror of the speaker's descending madness as the speaker's mind disintegrates and loses its grasp on reality. "I Felt a Funeral in My Brain,"

Dickinson’s poem " I felt a Funeral, in my Brain", is a prime example of complicity embodied by simple style and language. In this piece, Dickinson chronicles psychic fall. The use of many different devices such as sound, repetition, and metaphors, all help to develop the theme of the poem.

In the poem “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” Emily Dickinson uses symbolism to convey some sort of mental funeral that the speaker is experiencing. The funeral image that Dickinson depicts in the first line of the poem: “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” does not literally represent a funeral, but it is used to symbolism a mental breakdown and agony that the speaker is going through. By using this symbolism, the speaker is imagining the death of old ways of thought. Dickinson writes that when the funeral service was “like a Drum—“ (Dickinson 43) and that it “Kept beating—beating—till I thought My Mind was going numb—“ (43), leaving readers believing that the speaker is going mad. By depicting this image, Dickinson reveals that with the death of old thought; there is some sort of numbness or pain that is necessary to “progress to a better state” (Goldfarb 2). By repeating the beating sound two times, along with the rhyming sequence in the previous lines of the poem, Dickinson is stressing the numbness and the importance of it.

Emily Dickinson was thought to have an obsession with death due to her many poems and letters that contain the subject. In the later stages of her life, many of her friends and family members died. There is a window in the house where she lived that looked over the cemetery where she was a witness to many funerals that occurred. To see such a repeated reminder of loved ones lost and the presence of death in her backyard, her thoughts frequently turned to death. Poems like 280, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” (87) shows a clear insight into how she was affected by death. In that poem, Emily Dickinson wrote about a funeral service that she must have witnessed. “And Mourners to and fro/ Keep treading – treading – till it seemed/ That Sense was breaking through”(87). Funerals can be very hard to digest for the people attending. From the few funerals I have attended, people are