Emily Dickinson’s “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain” was first published in The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Third Series in 1896.The poetess exemplifies the collapse of her abstract mental process through employing concrete metaphors.Emily Dickinson was a recluse throughout her life and incorrigibly obsessed with the concept of death. The metaphor of the funeral brings in ideas of mourning, closure, depression, blankness and inactivity. Therefore, ‘funeral’ serves as an apt metaphor to express the turmoil in the mind of the speaker. The movement of the mourners is likened to the oscillating of a pendulum making its presence felt as time does with its omnipresence.
The idea of ‘treading’ brings the impression of stamping feet, indicating a kind of pressure on the mental process and a steady increase in the same. The poem describes the onset of psychosis as the speaker struggles with her ego. The burden of the same gives the impression of sense ‘breaking through’. Here, ‘sense’ implies both sensory perception and rational thought. It reflects the quality of ‘sense’- being a fragile material that can be broken into a thousand pieces .Thereby; the poetess utilizes apt metaphors to connote the lack of coherence in her mind.
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 –
The mourners appeared to be seated around her; the sense of mobbing leaves her in a claustrophobic atmosphere.…
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