Funeral In My Brain Diction

Words: 604
Pages: 3

I felt a Funeral, in my brain

Dickinson wrote over 1,000 poems during the course of her life. One of her most explored topics was death. Emily Dickinson would write about death while alluding to something else. “I felt a Funeral, in my brain” follows the speaker’s descent into insanity by the means of a funeral. Dickinson uses symbolism, imagery, and powerful metaphors to describe to the reader how she is losing her mind. The funeral is the most powerful metaphor. The first line presents the idea of the funeral, although it is happening in the speaker’s head. “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” (1). This is not referring to a physical death, but the death of her reasoning. One could say that during the first stanza the speaker is attempting to hold onto the sanity that she has left. “That Sense was breaking through” (4). The sense that is ‘breaking through’ is the reasoning that she does have left that is now trying to leave her heads. The mourners are there to ensure that the speaker is pushed off the edge. “And mourners to and fro” (2). In the second stanza, she continues to struggle with losing her reasoning. “Kept beating, beating, till I thought my mind was going numb” (7-8). In the third stanza, the speaker conveys to
…show more content…
She included both end rhymes and slant rhymes. The rhyme scheme helps with the flow of the poem. When Dickinson writes ‘drum and numb’ and ‘soul and toll’ it helps to create the feeling of a beat throughout the poem. Emily Dickinson also uses dashes quite frequently throughout her poetry. Those dashes add a sense of urgency and chaos in the last stanza. Is the speaker unable to finish because she has fallen into the empty abyss and left all of her reasoning behind her? One could say that with the very last line the speaker is trying to convey that they now know insanity. Emily Dickinson has done a wonderful job of what it would feel like to have a breakdown. “And Finished knowing- then-