Comp 111 poetry essay

In Emily Dickinson's poem "I Felt a Funeral in My Brain", Dickinson describes what seems to be a funeral in her mind. When one thinks of a funeral, they usually think of a ceremony for a person who has died. This funeral that Dickinson is experiencing in her brain, is actually a funeral for the death of her mind. Emily Dickinson describes events that usually take place at a funeral but the ideas she pitches to the reader doesn't exactly exemplify your ideal funeral. She tells the reader how there are mourners, a service, lifting of a box implying it is a coffin and nobody is being burried. In Emily Dickenson's poem, the reader can elaborate upon elements of poetry such as imagery, symbolism, diction, and metaphor that create a better sense of understanding.
In the poem "I Felt a Funeral in My Brain" Emily Dickinson exposes a person's intense anguish and suffering as they sink into a state of extreme madness. The poem is a carefully constructed analysis of the speaker's own mental experience. Dickinson uses the image of a funeral-service to symbolize the death of the speaker's sanity. Dickinson makes use of vivid imagery that builds in order to convey this abstract idea. One of the best examples is stanza three: “And then I heard them lift a box / And creak across my soul / With those same boots of lead / Then space began to toll” (9-12). At this point the speaker hears the coffin being lifted, being carried across her soul by the mourners, and then all reality seems to hang in suspension. Dickenson promotes the idea that at this point, there is something worse than death, which would be nothingness in her case. It is actually amazing how Dickenson is able to use one literary poetic element to better describe another element. When Dickenson states “Then space began to toll” (12), it's actually in theory opposite of an image itself, but perfectly describes this setting. Imagery is one of the few elements that Emily Dickensen illustrates through her poem.
In addition to her use of imagery in the poem "I Felt a Funeral in My Brain", Emily Dickenson covers symbolism as well. The poem is symbolized as terrifying in essence as it depicts a realization of the collapse of one's mental stability. Paula Bennett's idea share similarity as she states "she describes figuratively the terror she had experienced, and its explosive effect on her, in terms of a confrontation with existential dread." The reader experiences the horror of the speaker's descending madness. "I Felt a Funeral in My Brain," by Emily Dickinson creates an illusion of a mind becoming unstable by expressing the speaker's pain,as her existence seems to be coming to an abrupt end. When Dickenson says "And I dropped down, and down-/And hit a World at every plunge" (18-19), she symbolizes the word World as multiple states of insanity as it is all coming to an end now. James R. Guthrie comments about how this symbolism is relevant and of importance when he mentions "through the last line of the poem--multiple levels of reality or "World[s]" that her body and consciousness pierce, at every "Plunge."
While Emily Dickenson is providing the reader with an understanding of her poem through imagery and symbolism, there are moments were diction within her poetry can also describe how we should feel while reading. She concludes her stanzas majority of the time with a unique method of diction, using a dash. After reading each stanza and seeing that they each end with a dash, we tend to be left with the concept of unknown and undetermined fate. This method of writing shows a significant conlcusion as she states in last line, "And Finished knowing-then-"(20), because we are left hanging as to what happened, but in reality we know it was not only the end of the poem, but the end of Dickenson's mind. When referring to the concept of the image being painted in the mind of the reader, James R. Guthrie tells us"In the first three stanzas Dickinson carefully erects a plausible physical setting, which she then demolishes in the last two stanzas."
The concept of metaphor in Dickenson's poem, in addition to her depictions of imagery, symbolism, and diction, the element of metaphor is apparant within "I Felt a Funeral in My Brain." Her mind doesn't just feel like a funeral in Dickenson's case, the funeral is really taking place. We learn this in the beginning when she clearly states what is going on. The Poem at its entirety is to be considered a metaphor. She doesn't use any like or as comparing her thoughts and ideas to what a funeral is. Emily DIckenson wants us to know it is a funeral in her mind in which that concept is to be remembered throughout the poem as a whole. Paula Bennett shared an idea on the concept of metaphor in regards to this poem. "In these poems, Dickinson's confrontation with the abyss becomes the central metaphor for her vision of a world from which transcendent meaning has been withdrawn and in which, therefore, the speaker is free to reach any conclusion she wishes or, indeed, to reach no conclusion at all."
In conclusion, Emily Dickenson uses multiple elements of poetry within "I Felt a Funeral in My Brain." The idea is that there's really a funeral inside her mind. The reader can understand the levels of understanding she wants us to grasp while reading through imagery, symbolism, diction, and metaphor. All of these elements contain examples within that have a perfect demonstration.
From My Life a Loaded Gun: Dickinson, Plath, Rich, and Female Creativity. Copyright © 1986 by Paula Bennett. Reprinted with the permission of the author.
From Emily Dickinson, Woman Poet. Copyright © 1990 by Paula Bennet. Reprinted by permission of the author.
From Emily Dickinson’s Vision: Illness and Identity in Her Poetry. (University Press of Florida, 1998.) Copyright © 1998 by the Board of Regents of the State of Florida.