Emily Dickinson Insanity

Emily Dickinson was a reclusive American poet, born on December 10, 1830 in Amherst Massachusetts. Emily missed a good amount of school due to illnesses and depression. For the rest of her sick mother’s life she would be her caregiver and take over her responsibilities. Emily and her sisters were never married and lived in the same house. She secluded herself from the rest of society and dropped out of school due to depression, anxiety, and agoraphobia; the fear of going outside. Emily Dickinson was also treated for a painful disease in her eyes. During her time of seclusion she began writing her most famous works. Emily Dickinson died from kidney disease at the age of fifty six. Emily’s sister discovered her secret work and most of her work

“Mourners to and fro kept treading- treading- till it seemed that sense was breaking through,” (Dickinson 1). The more she mourned the lost of her sanity in her brain, the more she was able to cope. She uses imagery to describe the room as so quiet and the only thing a person could hear is the sound of her heart beating like a drum. Throughout the poem it is evident that the author’s sanity is deteriorating, she describes her mind as wrecked. With her descent into irrationality it makes her feel as if she is no longer a human, but instead belongs to "some strange race” (Dickinson 4). Emily Dickinson kept herself secluded from the world until the day she died, her inability to be with anyone is shown through the silence. Dickinson uses the metaphor of standing on a plank or board over a steep edge, to tell the reader about the fall into irrationality. “And hit a world at every plunge and finished knowing-then-,” (Dickinson 5). At every fall she hit a world of her past and as she left, they became a distant memory. The poem ends abruptly Leaving it open for different interpretations of what would have happened. Emily Dickinson was speculated to have suffered from Bipolar Disorder because of the poems she wrote. I Felt a Funeral in my Brain supports the accusations because it depicts the author of losing her sanity and having no control over the

The reclusive poet relates hope to a bird. She describes hope as the thing , “That perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all” (Dickinson 1). Hope is a feeling that lives in everyone and does not need words to guide us. She describes it as a feeling that does not have a direct translation, however everyone knows it. She tells the story of the bird of hope thriving through a storm. Hope is the one thing people hold onto in times of despair “That could abash the little Bird that kept so many warm,” (Dickinson 2). During a storm that could abash all hope, hope is what kept the people warm. “I've hear it in the chilliest land and on the strangest sea yet never in Extremity, it asked a crumb of me,” (Dickinson 3). The hope she talks about is everywhere, in the places that no one would expect it to be. The bird never asked for anything in return for all the security it