An Interpretation of Emily Dickinsons Poem I Felt a Funeral in My Brain :: Dickinson I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain Essays

An Interpretation of Emily Dickinsons Poem I Felt a Funeral in My BrainEmily Dickinson was a reclusive individual that was rarely seen by anyone outside of her immediate family and few close friends. This solitude emerges in her poetry in the form of doom and somberness depictions. Dickinson seems to have a fascination with terminal as if death is a friendly character rather than a horrible image. It has been stated that Dickinsons obsession with death was a sign to others around her and her readers that she was struggling internally. In the poem I Felt a Funeral in My Brain Dickinson seems to be describing a delusion of a person that is contemplating what will happen to him/her when he/she dies. This poem also seems to be an affirmation of heaven and hell and a ain battle within the storyteller to come to terms with his/her own mortal existence. In the first stanza Dickinson describes feeling a funeral in her brain. This could be a metaphor for her own personal death an d the reference to sense breaking through tells the reader that only through death can a person ever understand and/or value life. This could be viewed as a retrospection on the narrators life and a telling poem about where she was at in her existance around this conclusion of meter. If this interpretation is justified then in stanza two the funeral proceeds with the narrator hating to be there as she/he says And when they all were seated, A Service, like a Drum- Kept beating-beating-till I thought My Mind was going numb- This stanza shows that the narrator is still bored with the living world even in death. The third stanza continues the theme of a struggle between heaven and hell in the last line when the narrator states, Then space-began to toll. This reference to a bell tolling, or time running out seems to suggest the impending judgment for the narrator. Heaven is discussed in the forth stanza and compared to a bell As all the Heavens were a tam-tam And Being, but an Ear, And I, and Silence, some strange race