“I Felt a Funeral in My Brain” by Emily Dickinson is a poem with five stanzas, and it has an irregular rhyme. However, it uses repetition to create a rhythm and illustrates emphasis. Dickson presents an insane mind in the poem. The poem depicts the difficulty in understanding the mysteries in the feelings and thoughts of people. In other words, it demonstrates a state of mind that is experiencing helplessness and terror that usually occurs when one loses touch with reality. In the entire poem, the speaker displays a confused state of mind. Additionally, the “drum beating” evokes madness, which indicates that the mind is deteriorating (Dickinson 1).
The extended metaphor in stanza one of the funerals taking place in the speaker’s head undergoes broad vision in the poem. As the poem progresses, the metaphor in the stanzas expands from stanza to stanza. For instance, in the last three stanzas, the poem dramatically expands, and this makes the brain, which is illustrated in the first line to get into contact with the larger universe; for example, in stanza three, the phrase “Boots of Lead” describes the transformation from the inner soul to the outer world (Dickinson 1).
Through the speaker’s condition of the extended metaphor, the audience learns that the brain can lead a person to think of mysterious issues that can never be resolved. It always starts from a simple act of imagination, which eventually leads to complex visions that one can not have a valid answer to. Therefore, it can make a person lose reality and develop a state of insanity. For instance, the speaker starts to establish a feeling of funeral service in her brain, and this later becomes bombarded with numerous thoughts, which makes her have a confused mind.
Work Cited
Dickinson, Emily. “I Felt A Funeral in My Brain.” Nineteenth Century America Women Poets. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1896, pp. 1.