Explication of 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.

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

In the poem “Because I could Not stop for Death”, Emily Dickinson describes death as an experience that she is looking back on. Dickinson uses a variety of elements, such as personification, imagery and irony to get her point across that death is not a dreadful event, but actually a pleasant experience. Although death is often perceived as being depressing and frightening, it should be viewed in a positive way realizing that it is the beginning of eternity.

The second stanza discusses the state of mind of those waiting by the deathbed of the speaker. They have obviously been crying by the suggestion that their eyes had "wrung them dry." Through this description that they have stopped their weeping it is implied that they have now accepted the death of the speaker. In the second line of this stanza, the people are holding their breath for "that last Onset - when the King be witnessed." The King is probably God in this context and they are all awaiting his entering the room to take the soul of the speaker. The word onset as defined in Webster's Dictionary is "a setting out; start; beginning." This suggests that the death of the speaker is a beginning of an eternal life in heaven and not necessarily just an end to mortal life. Everyone in the room is expectant of the presence of God to carry the speaker to the this celestial afterlife.

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

Analysis of I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died and Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson

She would not talk to anyone, she even runs away whenever she see people around. Nevertheless, she tried to commit suicide at the certain point but she didn't succeed with that. In my mind, I think she was depressed or was having a behavior disorder because of her abnormal attitude. However, in the Emily Dickinson poem I believe that this lady’s behavior illustrates a good example of the poem in a way. In the poem, "I Felt a Funeral in My Brain" Dickinson seems to be the illustration of a delusion of a person; thus, a view of what happens to someone when they died. This poem also tells us about the existence of heaven and hell and a personal struggle with someone to come to terms with their own mortal existence. In the poem, Dickinson describes "feeling a funeral in her brain" as a metaphor for her own personal struggling and the reference to "sense breaking through" which tells us that only through death can a person ever understand or value their life. Also, she made a similarity of the word "mind," which is associated with intelligence, from "brain" in the first stanza. The funeral started out as a physical experience which literally implies that sometimes you might going through certain things that might even make u plan to commit suicide as the lady from the story planned to

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.

Many people are afraid of death, but for Emily she seems to embrace it. Dickinson’s use of imagery created a better understanding for the reader of how the poet feels about death. She has compared it to a Sunset, showing a beautiful coming to end. Dickinson uses movement of thought in her poem when she describes centuries feeling shorter than days. Her mind seems to roam free and time goes by slow for her.

“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” by Emily Dickinson states the death or transformation of something that is associated with the author. A funeral is usually associated with the death of someone, but in this case, it's eternal. Therefore, the author has lost something that is associated with her character. “My mind is going numb”, the feeling of numbness usually means that something is not working properly or at all. The authors brain is “going numb” could mean that the author herself is not aware of what is going on around her. “And then I heard them lift a box/ And creak across my soul”. When the author mentions “them”, she’s talking about the mourners, which in this case are the people

When I first read Emily Dickinson’s “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” One can immediately pick up on the typical eccentricity, abnormality and just plain oddness that comes with Dickinson’s works. Upon a little more intensive reading one can have an early grasp on what Dickinson was trying to convey. Dickinson seems to be alluding to the idea of going insane, about an individual losing their grip on reality and feeling sanity slide away from them. Dickinson plays on this concept of walking the reader through a step-by-step scenario of "Funeral," which very few readers will have difficulty in recognizing it: but it’s the question of what’s the funeral for, and who is it for that remains unanswered throughout the poem.

In Emily Dickinson's poem "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain", mental health is being discussed in a mellow manner. She uses gloomy word choice as with the words and phrases, "mourners, creak across my Soul, wrecked, and solitary". When reading the poem, the reader is aware that Dickinson is relating to a mental

Emily Dickinson a modern romantic writer, whose poems considered imaginative and natural, but also dark as she uses death as the main theme many times in her writings. She made the death look natural and painless since she wanted the reader to look for what after death and not be stuck in that single moment. In her poems imagination play a big role as it sets the ground for everything to unfold in a magical way. The speakers in Dickinson’s poetry, are sharp-sighted observers who see the inescapable limitations of their societies as well as their imagined and imaginable escapes. To make the abstract tangible, to define meaning without confining it, to inhabit a house that never became a prison, Dickinson created in her writing a distinctively elliptical language for expressing what was possible but not yet realized. She turned increasingly to this style that came to define her writing. The poems are rich in aphorism and dense

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