I Felt A Funeral In My Brain
Life, death,and reincarnation are portrayed in Emily Dickinson's poem "I Felt A Funeral In My Brain." The use of words associated with death gives the poem an ominous and dark karms. To add to this karma, important words that are strong in meaning are capitalized. At the beginning of this poem the feelings of grief and pain are evident. Throughout the rest of the poem, there is a strong sense that the speaker needs to make a choice between a world full of trouble and pain or a heaven that brings solitude and peace. This is all part of a vicious cycle. Sometimes when life doesn't turn out for the best, you need to wait until your cycle is up. This is reflected clearly at the end of the poem. The speaker lives life, passes away, and is reborn again into this world all throughout this poem's entirety. The first two words of this poem reveal strong feelings. The words "I felt" show that the speaker is talking about themselves. In line 1, the words "I felt a funeral in my brain," brings to mind death. The word "funeral" combined with the word "brain" can be simplified into the fact that death is inside the speaker. "and mourners to and fro/kept treading-treading-till it seemed/that sense was breaking through-"(2,3,4). H
ere the speaker is bothered by their inner death that keeps mourning ober and ober throughout their head. The dashes between "treading-treading-," allow a pause between the two words, inducing a long, repetitive treading. This repetition causes irritation. Finally, "sense was breaking through" (4). This simply means that the constant repetition is now starting to make sense. A feeling of relief has surfaced, but only for a short while. In the second staza, as quickly as the boices made sense to the speaker, the quicker they stopped. In line 5, " and when they all were seated" the relief stops, its being seated. When relief is seated and not mobing, all seems to stop. The speaker brings us the funeral by using the words "the service," meaning the funeral service, like one that takes place at a funeral home. Unlike the last stanza, where it all started to make sense, this stanza gets confusing. Confusion is shown in lines 6,7 and 8, "like a drum,/kept beating-beating-till I thought.my mind was going numb." Besides showing confusion, this shows repetition between "beathing-beating" and "treadin-treading-." This time though, at the end of the stanza instead of making sense, the speakers' mind is going numb. The speakers' thought process is dead, they are not thinking anymore. In the third stanza the voices start to take over by opening a box. Shown in lines9 through 11, "and then I heard them lift a box/and creak across my soul/with those same boots of lead." This box is opened and all the problems and troubles lingering inside are released upon the speaker like "bo
Some common words found in the essay are:
Funeral Brain, Heaven Earth's, , life death, Emily Dickinson's, speaker hears, race wrecked, seated relief, sense speaker, funeral brain, reflected poem, vicious cycle, boots lead, mind numb,
Approximate Word count = 1070
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
|
