Emily Dickinson Funerals

In Emily Dickinson’s, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”, it conveys how the speaker is going through madness to the point where she feels a funeral in her brain. The poem is terrifying for both the speaker and the reader, The speaker shows her loss of self while being in the state of unconsciousness. The terrifying experience makes the reader feel like they are going crazy and insane. Dickinson uses the metaphor of a funeral to represent the speaker’s sense that a part of her is dying. A funeral usually portrays death as a obvious connotation. Funerals are also a formal event, with rules and procedures that maintain order during the event. These creates irony since funerals are organized and formal while there is lack of control and insanity
that threaten the speaker. Funerals also mark the passage from one life to another. However, the speaker is not observing the funeral but is feeling it. She is both the observer of the funeral and participant, indicating that the self is divided. In the end the self will have been divided among many pieces. The mourners that are attending the funeral of the speaker are a metaphor to express her pain and suffering. Their treading shows a pressure that is pushing her down. The speaker has a short thought that reason is escaping or being lost. The pressure of the treading is reasserted with the repetition, “beating, beating.” This timer her, the source of reasoning and cognition goes “numb” which further explains her current state of mind. Further trace of the speaker’s loss of rationality is located in stanza three and four. The last two lines of stanza four conveys her condition, how she sees herself as “wrecked, solitary.” Her approach to irrationality separates her from other people, making herself alienated. Her alienation and inability to communicate are indicated by her being surrounded by silence. In the final stanza, Dickinson uses the metaphor of standing on a plank where she feels as if the plank is the only thing keeping herself from drowning in the sea of irrationality. Her hold on rationality was insecure, same as standing on the plank would make you insecure as well, She falls past “worlds,” which may stand for her past. She is losing her connections to reality. Her descent is described as “plunges,” showing her mental breakdown. The last word of the poem, “then--,” does not finish or end her experience but leaves it open for further madness to come .