Emily Dickinson's I Felt A Funeral, In My Brain

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.

    Figurative language plays a key role in the poem, as well. The best example is  The Morning after Death,  which sounds a lot like  mourning after death.  In fact,  mourning  could even replace  morning  and the poem would still make sense. Another example occurs in the second stanza, when Dickinson uses the words  sweeping  and  putting.   By using such cold, unfeeling words when describing matters of the heart, the author creates a numb, distant tone. She really means that after someone dies, one almost has to detach oneself from the feelings of love that once existed for the deceased.

Dickinson traces a mental breakdown through the stages of a funeral ritual to chart the plodding disintegration of her senses. As opposed to condemning people with mental illness or dismissing them in a reductive manner, Dickinson explores the thematic terror these individuals must have felt as all that was once understood is absent and rapidly eroding. The poetess’s use of the apt metaphor; funeral expresses the turmoil in the mind of the speaker describing the onset of psychosis characterized by monotony, morbidity, and repetitiveness so oppressive that ‘it seemed that sense was breaking through.’ The claustrophobic setting of the funeral and the heightened awareness of the sounds through onomatopoeia; ‘treading,’ ‘beating,’

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.

“The idea of death as a suitor is a powerful one, … In "Death is the supple suitor," Dickinson returns to the ideas of the earlier "Because I could not stop for Death” (Priddy). “The drive in "Because I could not stop for Death" symbolizes the movement through life and into death. In stanza three, the carriage passes from childhood, past the "Gazing Grain," which in its ripeness might be seen as representative of maturity, and finally past the "Setting Sun," symbolic of endings” (Priddy). All these images that the author set up throughout poem is just all leading to the end where Dickinson reveals the fact that all life comes to an end and how each image gives a more saddened feel to the poems. “Despite her seclusion, she was in correspondence with many of the prominent intellectuals of her time, including Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican, and Higginson, editor of the Atlantic Monthly. Many of her poems were included in letters or were mailed as messages. She wrote, particularly, in times of illness, death, or other hardship” (Priddy). She always had a spot in each of her poems whether it be to family friends or others it had the introduction of the saddening qualities that prevailed during this time of

Her entire world crumbles, so much; she feels the world mourning with her. The actions of mourners resonate with those of her mind, she thinks that she is about to die, but then she is the dead in the event. The woman is the body beneath the casket lid (Dickinson 2-2). Her life is as miserable as death and the worst part her entire brain is dysfunctional from the numbness of thought. The beating of drums is hammering her head down. This setting is her new world; she describes it as a desolate place with solace. The woman in this poem breaks with every attempt to move on with her life until she finally breaks out of her situation. In this case, it means that she attempts to make peace with her plight. After a long time alienating herself from the public, she somehow finds a way to move on. This poem is much complicated than the former, a characteristic that renders it unfriendly to a number of users as it leaves the reader in

This poem talks to the mentally ill. It reminds those living with a psychological disorder that their lives and thinking are valuable. Thus, imagination and enjoyment should not be constrained by the stigma of having a different worldview. Moreover, it uses metaphors to connect both world: the insane and the sane.

Kattelman believed Emily Dickinson was an expert at combining clever word choices with concepts and images into a few short but very powerful lines of poetry (1). On the surface ?Much Madness is divinest Sense? communicates both irony and defiance as the speaker denies the idea of common sense while reaching for a greater truth. We initially learn and recognize the difference between sane and insane as recognized by the society at large. As we read deeper, we begin to understand her syntax, use of punctuation and meaning of her seemingly random capitalization (2). Dickinson is no longer simply observing madness against the norms of society but declaring her own convictions of it. Kattelman argues her capitalization of words, for example ?Madness?, ?Sense?, and ?All? is her way of objectifying them as people. Dickinson often personifies animals, inanimate objects, and

In Dickinson’s poem, “Because I could not stop for Death,” there is much impression in the tone, in symbols, and in the use of imagery that exudes creativity. One might undoubtedly agree to an eerie, haunting, if not frightening, tone in Dickinson’s poem. Dickinson uses controlling adjectives—“slowly” and “passed”—to create a tone that seems rather placid. For example, “We slowly drove—He knew no haste / …We passed the School … / We passed the Setting Sun—,” sets a slow, quiet, calm, and dreamy atmosphere (5, 9, 11,

In her poem “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (340),” Emily Dickinson describes the experience of listening to a funeral inside one’s head. During this experience, Dickinson mixes the physical, the intellectual, and the spiritual realities in order to portray the speaker’s descent into insanity. In the first stanza, the speaker announces that he or she feels a funeral inside his or her brain. Those who have come to mourn the dead are moving around “to and fro” (153). The mourners keep walking (“treading—treading”) until it seemed “that Sense was breaking through—“(153).

Poet Emily Dickinson, in her poem, “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain”, traces the speakers descent into madness and losing a grip on reality. Dickinson’s purpose is to reveal the mental state she seems to be in and the stability she seems to be losing by metaphorical means. Dickinson presents a despairing and foreboding tone throughout her piece to empathize her internal struggle and disintegrating mind. In her first line Dickinson states,”I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”.

In some instances within literature, writers surprise readers by incorporating ideas that the reader may or may not expect. Within Emily Dickinson’s poem “I heard a Fly Buzz When I Died”, readers are introduced to a ghostly speaker that discusses the scene of their deathbed. Readers are exposed to many surprises throughout various aspects of the poem.

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.