Comparing Tell-Tale Heart And I Felt A Funeral In My Brain

The poems Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe and I felt a Funeral in my Brain by Emily Dickinson both share a common central idea of madness, though they each develop that idea differently. Poe uses more repetition in his poem and punctuation to create pacing, whereas Dickerson uses more capitalization in her poem to create emphasis and develop the central idea of madness though she does also use repetition but in a different way than Poe. However, they both still develop it throughout their respective texts in very different ways.

Emily Dickinson develops the central idea of madness throughout her poem by using capitalization of keywords that develop the central idea as well as using repetition of words that help to show how the narrator is insane and getting more and more so throughout the poem. She starts using repetition in the first

stanza and continues it throughout the poem. Some examples are: “Kept treading, treading” (First stanza.) “Kept beating-beating” (2nd stanza). “And I dropped down, and

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down” (5th stanza.) She uses repetition to show how the insanity is beating at the narrator’s mind and how she is becoming more and more insane with each sentence. Some examples of capitalization of keywords are: “I felt a Funeral in my Brain” (first stanza), which shows the key idea of the funeral metaphor. “A Service, like a Drum” (2nd stanza) which continues the funeral theme. And so on and so on. These all show how Dickerson uses capitalization and repetition to establish the central idea of my madness.
Poe uses repetition of ideas and punctuation in his poem to create the central idea of madness, similar to Dickinson who also uses repetition, though in direct word form, but differs in his use of punctuation and only uses capitalization to express the narrator’s strong emotions.

Some examples of repetition are how the narrator keeps repeating whether or not the narrator thinks he is mad and why. Examples are: “But why will you say that I am mad?” “How, then, am I mad?” “And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but an over-acuteness of the senses?” And so on and so on. Poe also uses punctuation to create pacing, like: “all closed, closed” “slowly, very-very slowly” “Cautiously, oh, so cautiously-cautiously” etc. etc.

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Therefore, both Poe’s poem The Tell Tale Heart and Emily Dickinson’s I felt a Funeral in my Brain share a common central idea of madness but develop it in different ways. Poe uses repetition of ideas and punctuation to create pacing. And finally, Dickerson uses repetition of words to show insanity and capitalization to stress key words for the central idea of

madness.