Analysis Of I Felt A Funeral In My Brain

1505 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Emily dickinson literary technique analysis

Emily Dickinson was a big 18th century poet and wrote many poems about things you cannot see but only feel with experience such her poem “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”; that was initially presented in 1896. Many of Dickinson’s poems were not about what was going on in the world, but more on what went on in her mind and her logic; this was due to her growing up around the Transcendentalism period. In the poem, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” Dickinson uses metaphors and imagery to try to describe complex ideas. Dickinson was known for self-dramatization and hyperboles in many of her poems. Many poets such as Marianna Moore, Louise Bogan, and Conrad Aiken have spoken of Dickinson’s wonderful work. “Her poems have been translated into Polish, It speaks on the mind falling apart. This is shown by “the opening stanza presents the metaphor of a funeral that is used throughout the poem to convey the sense of a breakdown” (“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” pg 137) She goes on to use the word brain which “refers to both the concrete physical organ and the abstract idea of the speakers mind” (“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” pg 137) By using the word brain it can show the intellectual impact of her disintegration within her mind. The second stanza “dramatizes the speaker’s fears and mental instability primary through the use of sound.” (“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” pg 137)In this stanza, the speaker used the words “my mind was going numb “to show how much she was intellectually impacted, and how much what the pain had done to her. In the third stanza the impact on the speaker’s mind becomes more intensive and more so as the poems goes on. She uses the words “boots of lead” and “treading treading” meaning she in being stepped on. “What is being trampled is the speaker’s soul” she feels like she is being stepped on because the pain keeps spreading and spreading throughout her body. Lines 12-16 Dickinson uses the words “as all the heavens were a bell “this metaphor is used to described the problems are getting louder but she is giving up all hope, and okay with her pain. “The speaker’s soul has no hope of shutting out the madness that has possessed it” This is a theme throughout the poem because Dickinson is more having insanity and losing any sanity that she had. “By comparing the speaker’s mental breakdown to a funeral, Dickinson suggest the horror and finality of such an event, “(“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”pg 138) She is not having any sanity what so ever, by comparing an intellectual impact to something of such terror and darkness as a funeral. “The speakers sanity becomes more endangered until it finally dies.” (“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”pg113) like Dickinson is so despondent that she has anger and turmoil burned so much inside of her. She also goes forward to use the words “my mind was going numb” and “hit a world, at every plunge” to describe an unalterable type of pain. She uses the words “And then a plank in reason, broke.” and then goes to say “And I dropped down, and dropped down”. These lines of text mean that that the reason she had to keep going fell apart, and she sunk more and more. Another Theme explored in this poem is doubt and uncertainty because people can view the poem as meaning “an individual’s complete loss of faith” .Dickinson also goes on to say “a service like a drum” which churches have services and she states “all the heavens were a bell” that could be compared to church

Show More
Related

  • Comparison between Because I Could Not Stop For Death and Come Up From the Fields Father

    556 Words  | 2 Pages

    He also made us experience the awe and misery of the mother by describing her “trembling steps” when she went to read. the letter, her “sickly white face and dull in the head”. In addition to her state after her son’s death, she was “presently drest in. black”, “her meals untouched”, “fitfully sleeping often waking” and “sleeping”. her “deep longing.to be with her dead son”. Dickinson uses imaginative and figurative language.

    Read More

  • Death and Emily Dickinson

    1312 Words  | 3 Pages

    One primary element of death is the experience of dying. Many of of us are scared of the thought of death. When we stop and think about what death will be like, we wonder what it will feel like, will it be painful, will it be scary? In Emily Dickinson's poem Because I Could Not Stop for Death, she focuses on what the journey into her afterlife will be like. Dickinson uses the first person narrative to tell her encounter with death. The form that she uses throughout the poem helps to convey her message. The poem is written in five quatrains. Each stanza written in a quatrain is written so that the poem is easy to read. The first two lines of the poem, “Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me;” (Clugston 2010), gives you a clear view of what the poems central theme is. Unlike most poems that are about death, Dickinson's attitu...

    Read More

  • Compare Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night And Because I Could Not Wait For Death

    1435 Words  | 3 Pages

    Dickinson 's poem uses poetic devices of personification to represent death, she represents death as if it were a living being. Dickinson 's capitalization of the word “DEATH”, causes us to see death as a name, in turn it becomes noun, a person, and a being, rather than what it truly is, which is the culminating even of human life. The most notable use of this, is seen in the very first few lines of the poem when Dickinson says “Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me”. In her poem Dickinson makes death her companion, as it is the person who is accompanying her to her grave. She states that death kindly stopped for her and she even goes as far as to give death the human ability to stop and pick her up. The occasion of death through Dickinson use of personification makes it seem like an interaction between two living beings and as a result the poem takes on a thoughtful and light hearted tone. The humanization of death makes the experience more acceptable and less strange, death takes on a known, familiar, recognizable form which in turn makes the experience more relatable. As the poem

    Read More

  • What Are The Similarities Between Emily Dickinson And Edgar Allan Poe

    1816 Words  | 4 Pages

    The speaker connects a symbol of death with her brain and says her “mind is going numb,” which implies that a part of her is dying (Dickinson 8). At the end of the poem, the speaker also states “a plank in reason broke / and I dropped down and down” (Dickinson 17-18). The statement of an interruption of logic followed by her descent is a hopeless ending that shows the speaker is losing her rationality and declining mentally. Dickinson portrays a speaker who is dying physcologically and thus is becoming mad. In addition, “I Felt a Funeral,” characterizes death as forcefully acting upon the speaker beyond her control, much like it is in her poem “Because I could not stop for Death.” In the former, Dickinson does not demonstrate the funeral and the downturn as stoppable or preventable, and in the latter she unsuccessfully avoids death. The opening lines “Because I could not stop for Death / He kindly stopped for me” shows the speaker did not want to give up her earthly life (Dickinson 1-2). Though the figure of death treated her politely, it is clear that the presence of death was unavoidable, as it was in the previous poem.

    Read More

  • Analysis of Dickinson’s I heard a Fly buzz - when I died

    1316 Words  | 3 Pages

    Dickinson's poetry is both thought provoking and shocking. This poem communicates many things about Dickinson, such as her cynical outlook on God, and her obsession with death. It is puzzling to me why a young lady such as Emily Dickinson would be so melancholy, since she seemed to have such a good life. Perhaps she just revealed in her poetry that dark side that most people try to keep hidden.

    Read More

  • because i could not stop for death

    681 Words  | 2 Pages

    In this poem, the woman did not just die but she has been dead. She is communicating from beyond the grave, by describing her journey with death. Death is portrayed as a gentleman who takes the speaker on a ride to eternity. Dickinson wrote this poem in a way that the reader is able to feel what the woman is going through. In this poem, death is seen as a passive and not as being something bad. Dickinson’s form and tone enables the reader to have an understanding of the message she is trying to convey. In this poem, each verse paints a piece of a picture for the reader and as you get to the end of the poem the picture is completed.

    Read More

  • Emily Dickinson's Because I Could Not Stop For Death

    727 Words  | 2 Pages

    She chooses this arrangement of verse in order to ordain a religious aspect into the poem, which does well to suite the theme and what she is fond of. As the recollection of the speaker’s death progresses, Dickinson uses the stanzas to mark the stages of the

    Read More

  • Emily Dickinson’s Poem It Was Not Death

    562 Words  | 2 Pages

    In both the first and second stanza, Dickinson is trying to make sense of her feelings by eliminating the different possibilities of her current mental state. She uses specific details in order to make these images clear to the reader: Dickinson is standing up, so these feelings cannot be that of death; bells are ringing to signify mid-day, hence the darkness surrounding her cannot be a result of night; the cold she is experiencing is not physical because she can also feel siroccos, which is a hot, dry wind that blows from northern Africa across southern Europe, on her skin; nor can the hea...

    Read More

  • Started Early - Took My Dog, by Emily Dickinson

    914 Words  | 2 Pages

    The waxing and waning action of the text might symbolize the constant cycles of life. The fact that the text recedes then elongates in rhythm make the reader think the speaker of the poem is not sure what steps to take in their life. The speaker might not have convinced him or herself about the suicide attempt. Many suicidal thoughts are stopped short of action and then thought about later. Dickinson writes in this style to show the opposing forces of every situation. Suicide would likely be the most contemplated decision the narrator has ever had to make.

    Read More

  • Emily Dickinson and Charles Wright

    1684 Words  | 4 Pages

    Dickinson employs vivid impressions of death in this poem. In the first line, she employs the analogy between sleep and death; sleep is silent but death lives within silence. She uses the word “it” to help identify something other than human. She declares that “it….will not tell its name” as thought it refuses to speak and then resents the dead for its stillness and laziness. Then she acknowledges the attraction she has to death by doubting its “gravity”. In the third stanza, she expresses that she would not cry for the dead because not only is it offensive to the dead but it might panic the soul to return to dust. Christians believe that from the earth we are made and once we die, we return to the dust of the earth.

    Read More

  • Dickinson and Her religion

    1059 Words  | 3 Pages

    Emily Dickinson was one of the greatest woman poets. She left us with numerous works that show us her secluded world. Like other major artists of nineteenth-century American introspection such as Emerson, Thoreau, and Melville, Dickinson makes poetic use of her vacillations between doubt and faith. The style of her first efforts was fairly conventional, but after years of practice she began to give room for experiments. Often written in the meter of hymns, her poems dealt not only with issues of death, faith and immortality, but with nature, domesticity, and the power and limits of language.

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis of Emily Dickinson's Poetry

    1056 Words  | 3 Pages

    Imagery is a big component to most works of poetry. Authors strive to achieve a certain image for the reader to paint in their mind. Dickinson tries to paint a picture of ?death? in her own words. Thomas A. Johnson, an interpretive author of Dickinson's work, says that ?In 1863 Death came into full statue as a person. ?Because I could not stop for Death? is a superlative achievement wherein Death becomes one of the greatest characters of literature? (Johnson). Dickinson's picture to the audience is created by making ?Death? an actual character in the poem. By her constantly calling death either ?his? or ?he,? she denotes a specific person and gender. Dickinson also compares ?Death? to having the same human qualities as the other character in the poem. She has ?Death? physically arriving and taking the other character in the carriage with him. In the poem, Dickinson shows the reader her interpretation of what this person is going through as they are dying and being taken away by ?Death?. Dickinson gives images such as ?The Dews drew quivering and chill --? and ?A Swelling of the Ground --? (14, 18). In both of these lines, Dickinson has the reader conjure up subtle images of death. The ?quivering an chill? brings to the reader's mind of death being ...

    Read More

  • Death in Dickinson

    591 Words  | 2 Pages

    Emily Dickinson is one of the most popular American poets of all time. Her poetry is seen as intense and passionate. Several of her many poems seem to be devoted to death and sadness. No one seems to know the exact connections between actual events in her life and the poetry that she wrote. The reader can see vivid images of Dickinson's ideas of death in several of her poems. Dickinson's use of imagery and symbolism are apparent in several of her death poems, especially in these three: "I Felt a Funeral in My Brain," "I Heard a Fly Buzz-When I Died," and "Because I Could Not Stop for Death."

    Read More

  • Emily Dickinson's Obsession with Death

    2687 Words  | 6 Pages

    ...o curb the appetite that humans have to know the secrets of life and death. This, then, is the central theme of all her poems: Though she believes strongly in idea of an afterlife, even she understands that nothing is certain, but that a bit of logic and a large amount of faith will guide her through the chaotic journey towards her final resting place—wherever or whatever it may be.

    Read More

  • Themes of Death and Immortality in Emily Dickinson's Poetry

    991 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout Emily Dickinson’s poetry there is a reoccurring theme of death and immortality. The theme of death is further separated into two major categories including the curiosity Dickinson held of the process of dying and the feelings accompanied with it and the reaction to the death of a loved one. Two of Dickinson’s many poems that contain a theme of death include: “Because I Could Not Stop For Death,” and “After great pain, a formal feeling comes.”

    Read More

More about Analysis Of I Felt A Funeral In My Brain

Open Document