I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain
“I Felt A Funeral, In My Brain” In Emily Dickinson’s poem, “I Felt A Funeral, In My Brain,” she is describing the mental breakdown of her sanity using a funeral as a metaphor and she does this very nicely within this poem. The first time reading through the poem, it was hard to make of it. The second time reading the poem, it seemed like her soul was witnessing her own funeral. It was not until the poem became clear that Emily Dickinson witnessed the funeral only by the sense of sound and feel. Emily Dickinson used the different stages of the funeral to show the decent of her mental breakdown. In the first stanza, the poem opens with “I felt a Funeral in my Brain,” showing the beginning of the descent into insanity because with the word funeral. Emily uses “I felt a Funeral...” and not I felt like a funeral, thus making this seem real because if Emily were to use a simile in this poem about her mind, the use of figurative language would not help in Emily’s poem. Emily sounds like she is trying to convey that there is a funeral going on within her brain. In the next part of this stanza she stated “Mourners..kept treading –treading” into the service of the funeral and “That Sense was breaking through”, it seems that with the mourners are making Emily a little crazy because if someone had a thought of someone walking in their mind, metaphorically, it would make he or she feel unpleasant, giving them a bad headache. Also with the tempo of how she writes, “Kept treading-treading-“ it gives the impression of something that is not enjoy full because of the pauses in between. In the second stanza, the funeral service started all of the “Mourners” are seated and she describes the service “like a Drum”. Emily compares the service to a drum because a normal funeral service would not be associated with drums of any sort. Emily repeats the word “beating” during the duration of the service, the scene can be interpret as a headache of some sort and can be