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

was therefore published posthumously. Emily Dickinson includes an abundance of imagery in her poems such as, Because I could not Stop for Death, I felt a Funeral in my Brain, and “Hope” is the thing with feathers to reveal her outlook on life because of herown experiences.
In Because I could not Stop for Death Emily depicts death, as a carriage driver, as chivalrous and with no haste. “We slowly drove, he knew no haste, and I had put away my labor, and my leisure too, for his civility,” (Dickinson 2). Through this stanza Dickinson gives death everything and makes it a slow let beautiful process. The carriage ride showing her life brings her past a school, fields, and “a house that seemed a swelling
of the ground” (Dickinson 5). The school is where everything started and where the first memories of a child would be. The fields show the work of her life and how it has grown. The swelling in the ground is her grave, the end of her life and where she would be for the rest of eternity. Dear who was portrayed as a carriage driver, took her through her entire life and as the sun began to leave the skies, so did her life. “Since then ‘'tis centuries, and yet each feels shorter than the day,” (Dickinson 6). Dickinson describes being dead for centuries but feeling only like a day, being dead for eternity only felt like a quick day went by. Emily Dickinson suffered from depression, anxiety and agoraphobia. People who suffer from severe depression often feel like death is the better option. Emily was secluded from life and dream of her death. She was it as a beautiful place that was better than where she was then. She translates that feeling through her poem by believing that death was an experience that she anticipated and was a beautiful process.
I Felt a Funeral in my Brain reveals that apart of the author is dying from insanity.

“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

emotions.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers is one of Emily Dickinson’s poems that is not centered around death and the afterlife but instead is centered around hope.

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

gave.
Emily Dickinson was a poet with most of her work published after her death. Her writing covers darkness, death, and hope and love. She suffered from depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and agoraphobia. All of her life struggles portray through her works and show how she views the world. In Because I could not stop for Death Emily saw death as a beautiful journey and used imagery to show it as peaceful and better than the world we live in. I Felt a Funeral in my Brain is about the battle of losing sanity. The silence in the mind drives one crazy to the point of the mind falling off a steep cliff and past all the worlds and moments they lived. “Hope” is the thing with feathers revolves around the importances of hope. Emily sees it as the motivation to keep people warm in times of a storm. She sees hope in the most unlikely places. Hope is a gift that asks for nothing inn return