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). Dickinson’s repetition of the word treading imitates a walk similar to pacing. At the beginning of the second stanza, the mourners are all seated, and the funeral can begin. The service feels like a beating drum to the speaker, beating just as the mourners were treading. The drums continue beating until the speaker feels as if his or …show more content…
First, the ringing bell extends into “the Heavens” (153). The ringing fills the empty world with sound in which the “Being” is “but an ear” (153). If human beings are simply an ear, then they are only listeners to the noises of the universe. As passive listeners, the audience (human beings) are wrecked along with the speaker (“And I”) and “Silence” (153). Silence, the absence of sound, is wrecked along with the speaker as the ringing bells fill the empty space. In the final stanza, the floor the speaker is standing on breaks, and the speaker begins to fall. Dickinson writes, “And then a Plank in Reason, broke, / And I dropped down, and down—“(153). The floor the speaker has been supported by is “Reason,” suggesting that reason—intellect or sanity is all that has been sustaining the speaker. As the speaker falls, he or she hits “a World, at every plunge” (153). The speaker falls from reason, into another world: a world without reason, so the speaker is “Finished
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.
Lastly, the poet also uses hyperbole to express his poem with lines such as “dawn leaping,” “sun swells,” and “light rushing to darkness,” (Bradley, 1986, p. 749). The poet continues to use this imagery to stimulate the reader’s imagination. The poet keeps the mysterious flow moving and finally ending making the reader ask if he makes a sound that can be heard from a great distance yet not knowing for sure.
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
“Where what breathes, breathes / and what drinks, drinks,” the persona says (3,5). Natures relationships depicted in the first stanza are beautiful. At first, something as simple as the “islands” may seem unimportant (1). Once analyzed, its purposed is defined by providing a warm home for life to sustain. Without the “restless wind” and “incoming tide,” the animals could not sustain (4,6). Everything in the universe is interconnected.
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
In addition to poetic devices used, the poem has a structural pattern that deepens the meaning by adding emphasis. The poem structurally consists of six stanzas with four lines each. These stanzas use an 8,6,8,6 syllable scheme for most of the poem. In addition, each line is written in iambic meter meaning every second syllable is stressed. This is also a common syllable scheme for ballads and hymns. Knowing Dickinson’s background, this syllable scheme adds meaning as a ballad is used to narrate something and a hymn is a religious song or poem. In the poem, there are unsystematic capital letters and dashes in multiple locations. However, these capital letters have meaning behind them. In lines one and four “Because I could not stop for Death/And
Exploring the inner turmoil of the human soul is a fascinating subject that has captivated members of academia since the dawn of metacognition. Paul Simon writes a beautiful, harmonious piece of timeless art known as The Sound of Silence, which is almost whispered, in song, by Art Garfunkel. Paul Simon, by using the enticing paradox: “the sound of silence”, the clever use of “light” to describe the false hope society places on external forces, as well as a plethora of other paradoxes and metaphors, such as a growing seed, urges people to cease looking to extraneous solutions to answer their internal quarrels, and begin instead, looking within themselves for the answers they seek. Simon kicks off this incredible introspection by depicting his inner quarrels as a “vision” that started as a “seed that is planted in his brain”.
In addition to these three stages, the final stage of eternity was symbolized in the last two lines of the poem, the “Horses Heads” (23), leading “towards Eternity” (24). Dickinson fathomed the incomprehensible progression of life by unraveling its complexity with figurative symbols. Emily Dickinson dresses the scene such that mental pictures of sight, feeling, and sound come to life. The imagery begins the moment Dickinson invites Her reader into the “Carriage.” Death “slowly” takes the readers on a sight seeing trip where they see the stages of life. The first site “We” passed was the “School, where Children strove” (9). Because it deals with an important symbol, —the “Ring”—this first scene is perhaps the most important. One author noted that “the children, at recess, do not play (as one would expect them to) but strive” (Monteiro 20).
In the first stanza the speaker talks about a funeral in her brain which indicates she could be imagining a funeral of her own. The speaker mentions that in her imagination she sees mourners coming to the funeral to mourn her death. It almost seems as if she were trying to describe the mourners as if they were in disbelief but the reality was slowly hitting them. Emily Dickinson used the rhyme scheme ABAB in this stanza. There is only one type of metaphor in this stanza which is when the speaker says “I felt a funeral in my brain”(1).
“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
This is symbolic of her looking at death as a new beginning as opposed to a sad ending. There is a feeling of disappointment as she thinks that she is going towards eternity but she just ends up viewing the “House that Seemed a Swelling of the Ground” and then centuries later, reflects upon her journey towards and eternity she didn’t witness. To Dickinson death was not something to be afraid of but to rather embrace and accept because it was inevitable, yet as in her life ends up disappointed because death leads to nothingness.
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.
What does the last moment look like? Is it horrified? Dickinson gives her answer in the last stanza:
The poem is comprised of six stanzas, each having four lines, which suggests that each stanza has a short idea that supports and leads to the underlying theme of the poem. The length of the lines are very short and choppy as complete ideas or “sentences” get separated into multiple lines. As for syllables within each line, the poem contains a pattern that switches from eight syllables in one line, six syllables in the next, back to eight syllables in the next line,and so on. Throughout the poem, the first word of each line is capitalized as well as each noun which can slow the reader down, making them pause to consider the significance of the words rather than reading past it and breezing through the poem. Dashes are commonly used throughout the poem and are at the end of almost every line. Like the capitalizations, the dashes can make the reader pause and usher on to the next line. They can also be seen as connectors or even as strings, pulling you through the poem. The particular rhyme scheme is best described as ABCB, which is a set of four line stanzas in which the second and fourth lines rhyme. Not only does the rhyme tie the poem together, but it draws attention to some important words such as, "immortality.” However, Dickinson doesn’t strictly use exact rhyme in this poem. In fact, only the first and fifth stanzas rhyme in the ABCB scheme. For example, the lines in the fourth stanza which end in "chill" and "tulle". While these words do not exactly rhyme, the similarity in the 'l' sounds carry a near or slight rhyme,
In her first stanza she talks about how her feelings are numb and why "He" also known as God would continue to do this to her for years before. She feels no excitement as it is seen in her first stanza, line two. "The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs-" (Dickinson, I, II). She explains that her nerves sit unsteadily within her. She is in a great deal of pain and suffering, that her heart cannot handle.