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  • Essay / Literary Analysis of I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain by Dickinson

    Born and raised in Massachusetts, Emily Dickinson grew up in a wealthy Puritan family. Even though his parents had three children, they had no relationship with them. Dickinson noted that her father was "too busy with his underpants" and wrote to a friend: "I never had a mother." With access to quality education and her preference for isolation, she became interested in creating literary works. Before her death, she spent several decades writing poetry in her family home. Unfortunately, his "difficult-to-read writing" caused publishers to shy away from his literary works, so that they only published seven poems during his lifetime. After her death in 1886, her sister Lavinia found nearly 900 unpublished poems by Dickinson. The majority of them are anonymous and are not dated. In 1955, Thomas H. Johnson published a three-volume edition of his poems. In these he referred to each unnamed poem as a number. Today his works are usually cited either by their number in Johnson's addition or by the first line of the poem. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The themes of his hundreds of poems were usually topics like change, death, God, love, nature, secrets, or truth. In the many poems that provoke subtle changes of emotion in the reader, the choice of words and images “emphasizes the ritual of death with a movement of meaning to death.” In some of his poems, the rhyme pattern is irregular and then becomes regulated. This could represent a loss of control or, alternatively, a takeover. Repetition and other literary devices emphasize his belief that time will continue after humanity. A good example of this is a repetition in "Because I Couldn't Stop to Die." In the poem I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain, one of the first qualities of the poem that a reader would notice is the use of a multitude of hyphens.” They represent the idea that words and statements come quickly and then go. Although Dickinson preferred to isolate herself alone in her room, historians believe that she had few if any relationships. In fact, neither she nor her sister married. Even if Dickinson were to be presumed mentally unstable, she still possessed a high degree of poetic skill. Richard B. Sewall noted, “She seems as close to hitting bottom here as ever.” But there was nothing abnormal in her mind when she wrote [this] poem. Although readers and prominent literary figures feel a sense of disorder and loss of self in Dickinson's poems, we must keep in mind the use of particular elements of poetry. Poetry requires a lot of self-reflection and reasoning. In many of his poems there is a movement in a negative direction. This negative energy could imply a trip to hell or an entry into psychological and spiritual depths. His poems were "less simple, alluding to impenetrable silences and unsaid things." The first line of I felt a funeral, in my brain, says “I felt a funeral, in my brain,” and the tone of the poem is already depressing. The funeral is not a happy event and the influence of the poem is questionable. The funeral could be a metaphor or Dickinson's experience. She could be expressing her feelings about an actual funeral or the deceased or the funeral is a metaphor for her deep, dark thoughts and feelings. The recurring theme and personificationof death in Dickinson's work reinforces the idea that she believed that death is inevitable and will happen shortly. Another possibility is that the poems were a way to entertain or express what physical death means. According to Dickinson, “it is in this forgetting that the terror lies, and not in the process of dying.” She thought that death was an almost comfortable experience and that the uncontrollable part was the most terrifying. Most of his problems were in his mind. With all the time she had, she could think and think about anything. Without her mental disorientation, she would not have been able to create austere and dark literature. The degree of isolation kept the inside of his mind constantly occupied. All this thinking resulted in vivid images. Concrete imagery communicates concepts and scenes with sensory language. His use of words that represent colors, objects, textures and sounds, etc. can help readers create a powerful image in their head when reading his poems. She often uses symbols in her work. A perfect example of regular use of symbols is the poem titled I Felt a Burial in My Brain. At the beginning of the first stanza, the speaker seems to be trying to face and question death. The poem almost gives the impression of two different perspectives of talking about the living and the undead. The length of each line and the height of each stanza help establish tone and can also represent symbols. In I felt a funeral, in my brain, the lines and the structure of the lines recall an epitaph on tombstones: I felt a funeral, in my brain, and the mourners came and went walked - walked - until it seemed that the sense was breaking through - And when they were all seated, a service, like a drum - kept beating - beating - until I thought my mind was going numb - and then I heard them lift a box and grind through my soul with those same lead boots, again, then space - began to ring, As all the heavens were a bell, And being, but an ear, And I , and Silence, a strange race, Shipwrecked, lonely, here - And then a plank of Reason broke, And I fell, and down - And strike a world, with each plunge, And end of knowing -then -Dotted lines suggest that ideas and statements come and go quickly. These short dashes can also represent the life of an organism or idea. Another theory Dickinson believed in is that death is indicated by loud bursts of sound followed by instantaneous silence. A concrete example could be the clap of thunder before the silence. Death is sudden and stunning and everything else becomes silent. Another comparable scenario is "a clumsy pianist, stunning the subject with pounding music, before delivering a final blow like a thunderbolt." The repetition of the words "trade" and "beat" in I Felt a Funeral, in my brain, helps the reader to "hear what the speaker hears." Cynthia Griffin Wolff states that "the speaker gives an account, beyond the grave, of what happened at her own funeral." Another interpretation of the funeral is the death of love for Samuel Bowles. The term "extended metaphor" is a metaphor that continues throughout several sentences of a paragraph or lines of a poem. It often spans a sentence and sometimes includes an entire paragraph or stanza. Funerals include mourners, a service and the removal of a casket. Dickinson's "Plank of Reason" is a biblical reference to a man crossing the abyss..