I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, By EMILY DICKINSON detailed summary and critical analysis

 

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

By EMILY DICKINSON

Emily Dickenson (1830-1886)

•        American poet

•        Lived in isolation, developed a penchant for white clothing and her reluctance to meet anyone

•        Dickenson was a prolific poet, only 10/1800 poems were published during her lifetime

•        The poems published were edited to fit conventional poetic rules.

•        Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality

Structure and syntax

•        The extensive use of dashes and unconventional capitalization in Dickenson’s manuscripts and the idiosyncratic vocabulary and imagery.

•        Dickenson avoids pentameter, opting more generally for trimeter and tetrameter

•        Twentieth century scholars are deeply interested by Dickenson’s highly individual use of punctuation and lineation

•        Dickenson’s poetry frequently uses humour, puns, irony and satire.

•        Some of the poems are

•        Flowers and gardens

•        The master poems

•        Gospel poems

•        The Undiscovered continent

•        Like Emerson, Thoreau  and Whitman, she experimented with expression in order to free it from conventional restraints

•        Like Charlotte Bronte and Elizabeth Browning, she crafted new type of persona for the first person

•        Dickenson created her writing in elliptical language for expressing what was possible but not yet realized.

Poem

I measure every grief I meet

The Savior must have been a docile Gentleman

A Man may make a remark

I tie my Hat- I crease my shawl

Safe in their Alabaster Chambers

One sister have I in our house

Knows how to forget

Besides the Autumn poets sing

I am Nobody! Who are you

I taste a liquor never brewed

The soul selects her society

I heard a fly buzz

Because I could not stop for death

Hope is the thing with feathers

Come slowly- Eden

XLV

Two butterflies went out at noon

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro

Kept treading - treading - till it seemed

That Sense was breaking through -

 

And when they all were seated,

A Service, like a Drum -

Kept beating - beating - till I thought

My mind was going numb -

 

And then I heard them lift a Box

And creak across my Soul

With those same Boots of Lead, again,

Then Space - began to toll,

 

As all the Heavens were a Bell,

And Being, but an Ear,

And I, and Silence, some strange Race,

Wrecked, solitary, here -

 

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,

And I dropped down, and down -

And hit a World, at every plunge,

And Finished knowing - then -

•         

I Felt a Funeral in my Brain (1896)

•        The exact year of composition of the poem is not known.

•        It explores the working of the human mind under stress and attempts to replicate the stages of mental breakdown through the ovrall metaphor of a funeral.

•        The common rituals of a funeral are used by Dickenson to mark the stages of speaker’s mental collapse until she faces a destruction that no words can articulate

•        As the metaphorical funeral begins and progresses, the speaker’s mind grows numb until her final remark stops in mid- sentence. 

•        The poem is a staple in Dickenson’s canon and reflects her ability to replicate human consciousness in a controlled poetic form

•        The poem uses concrete language and imagery to explore abstract issues

•        An individual being assaulted by an idea that threatens to destroy all of his/her dearly held assumptions or a mind’s inability to cope with the pressures placed upon it from the outside world.

Theme

•        Aberration of the mind, the gradual breakup of rational powers and the final onset of madness.

•        Dickenson has concretized the experience of a sick mind obsessed with its approaching disintegration.

•        The use of funeral as a metaphor stands for the death of rationality.

Analysis

•        The speaker imagines that a funeral is taking place inside her brain and she can feel the mourners pacing to and forth

•        The mourners sit down and the funeral service begins. Unfortunately this service seems more like a performance of stomp than a religious gathering. The drum like beating of the service makes her think her mind is going dump

•        The mourners lift the casket and walk across her soul(they are wearing heavy lead boots which is unthoughtful of them)

•        At the end of the service, she feels as if a church bells were ringing inside her head. She imagines her mind as the entire universe.

Hymn like poem in quatrains

•        Dickenson’s poems are frequently compared to church hymns. Church hymns are often written in rhyming quatrains with regular rhythm.

•        Rhyme scheme : ABCB

•        Meter: Iambic

•        One of the most common meter in hymns is eight syllable line followed by six syllable line. 

Symbols

•        Funeral

•        Mind- Body-Soul

•        Sound

•        Weight

•        Versions of reality

•        Suffering

•        Religion