I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain By Emily Dickinson Analysis by Sam Knoll AP English IV Dowling Period 3

A Brief Summery Dickinson’s poem narrates the speaker’s decent into madness. The speaker explores the terrifying physical and mental sensations that accompany their experience leading the audience on the journey with them.

Stanza 1 The introduction of the experience using the world funeral connotes death and loss, a funeral within the brain suggests loss of an ability or emotion. By explaining the events as occurring in the brain one can determine it would have felt such as a headache. The mourners reinforce the idea of loss, their repetitive treading “to and fro” reveals a monotonous systematic event, as well as some form of order. The imagery of “that sense” “breaking through” implies a resistance to the death for which the funeral is being held.

Stanza 2 The service waiting until the mourners had been seated reinforces the idea of order. The imagery of the service beating like a drum, again reveals a sense of monotony and suggests a planned speech and a previous occurrence. Repetition of the word “beating” enhances the dullness of the event. The imagery of the speaker’s mind “going numb” due to the events of the metaphorical funeral can be compared to a feeling of sorrow and an excessive amount of pain such as experienced in migraines.

Stanza 3 The lifting of a box symbolizes the movement of a coffin, which relates back to the funeral motif. The imagery of the box creaking implies age and fragility, which cause wood to make such creaking sounds, wood being the most common material used in making coffins. The creaking imagery also connotes an eerie tone, similar to that one would feel when walking through and old abandoned home with wood floors. The boots of lead imply a painfully loud thudding in the speaker’s head, and the space tolling reiterates the imagery of a loud repetitive sound.

Stanza 4 Stanza four marks the shift of the poem. The tone shifts from monotonous and ritualistic to unplanned and chaotic. The speaker also changes from explaining the mental sensations to the physical sensations. The imagery of the heavens, which essentially means the entirety of the universe, being a bell and the speaker’s position as a single ear reiterates the concept of a painfully loud noise. Imagery of the speaker left alone “wrecked” and in “solitary” creates a sense of fear, and a tone of foreboding.

Stanza 5 By describing the speaker’s “plank in reason” breaking the author shows the collapse of the speaker’s intellectual foundation. Imagery of the speaker falling down connotes loss of control as well as fear. By describing the decent as a plunge one can conclude it was a painful and uncontrolled, adding to the tone of foreboding. The hitting of worlds during the plunge and the unsatisfying end to the poem reaffirm the motif of insanity and chaos.

Works Cited http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/funeral.htm http://www.shmoop.com/i-felt-a-funeral-in-my-brain/summary.html