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My Brain Connotation

Satisfactory Essays

In “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” Emily Dickinson presents an idea of what it’s like to go through mental turmoil; she links the process of losing grip on reality to that of a funeral, signifying the end of the speaker’s sanity. In this short poem, the speaker is able to take the reader on a journey that is full of anguish and uncertainty. There is a tremendous amount of artistic creativity in this work by Dickinson. She uses multiple elements of poetry to make the reader experience what the speaker is going through. Dickinson uses connotation in the poem “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” to reveal the helplessness and organized chaos that is involved when one loses their mind. The reader is presented with the idea of a funeral. However, …show more content…

Its beating is like a pounding in the speakers head drowning out everything else. The loud banging and deep sound of its echo are pounding its way through her mind until she cannot feel anything anymore. At this point, the speaker shows an inability to differentiate self from everything else. In stanza three the speaker reveals the dividing of her mind. She is no longer only observing the funeral; she is also the one being laid to rest. Dickinson writes, “And then I heard them lift a Box / And creak across my Soul / With those same Boots of Lead, again,” (9-11). At this point, the pain and suffering in her mind have decided to end the cruelty and lay her sanity to rest. The part of her mind that once dwelled in reality is now locked away, buried under six feet of confusion. The lead boots she hears creaking across her soul represents the heaviness of the agony that is pressing down on her psyche, keeping her in her box. This is a true picture painted by Dickinson of what helplessness and fading into nothing is like. The speaker then reveals the loneliness of her new state of mind. Dickinson writes, “And Being, but an Ear / And I, and Silence, some strange Race / Wrecked, solitary, here—” (14-16). Here Dickinson describes an inability to connect to the outside world any longer. The speaker knows what is happening around her, but is unable to reach out to anyone for help. She has become one with the silence, a part of a race of people not

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