Nov 10, 2009

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain | Introduction

“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” was first published in 1896. Because Emily Dickinson lived a life of great privacy and only published a handful of poems in her lifetime, the exact year of its composition is unknown; most scholars agree that it was written around 1861.

Like many of Dickinson’s other poems, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” explores the workings of the human mind under stress and attempts to replicate the stages of a mental breakdown through the overall metaphor of a funeral. The common rituals of a funeral are used by Dickinson to mark the stages of the speaker’s mental collapse until she faces a destruction that no words can articulate. As the metaphorical funeral begins and progresses, the speaker’s “mind” grows “numb” until her final remark stops in mid-sentence. The poem is a staple in Dickinson’s canon and reflects her ability to replicate human consciousness in a controlled poetic form. Like her poems “After great pain, a formal feeling comes—”, “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers—” and “I felt a Cleaving in my Mind—”, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” uses concrete language and imagery to explore abstract issues.

The event that the funeral is used to describe, however, does not have to be interpreted as a mental breakdown. The poem allows for other readings of what constitutes the “funeral,” such as an individual’s being assaulted by an idea that threatens to destroy all of his or her dearly held assumptions or a mind’s inability to cope with the pressures placed upon it from the outside world. The poem’s ambiguities allow for multiple readings, all of which, however, converge in the idea that the speaker’s brain is ceremoniously “laid to rest” by the poem’s conclusion.

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain Summary

Lines 1–4
“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” is a poem in which Dickinson attempts to render into formal poetic language the experience of a mind facing its own collapse; the opening stanza presents the metaphor of a funeral that is used throughout the poem to convey the sense of this breakdown to the reader. Brain here refers to both the concrete physical organ and to the abstract idea of the speaker’s mind; such dual meanings are used throughout the poem to convey the physical and mental effects of the breakdown. Losing one’s reason is like a funeral: the final interment and burial of rational thought. The mourners can be read as symbols of the events or ideas that bring on the speaker’s collapse; such events or ideas are incessant (they keep “treading—treading”) and continue until the speaker begins to realize what is happening. Her “sense” (or knowledge) of what is occurring begins “breaking through” to culminate in some kind of understanding about her impending devastation. Like the word brain, which has two meanings, the word sense can also refer to the speaker’s physical senses, which are likewise affected by the mourners plaguing her mind.

Lines 5–8
As the opening lines set up the funeral as an overall metaphor for the speaker’s breakdown, subsequent stanzas refer to specific parts of the funeral ritual to further convey the speaker’s experience. This stanza dramatizes the speaker’s growing fears and mental instability primarily through the use of sound. The mourners are all seated, representing a quiet moment, perhaps marking the end of the speaker’s initial panic or mental chaos. However, the respite is short-lived, and the “Service, like a Drum” begins a fresh assault on both her physical senses and mind. The sound of the drum, like the tread of the mourners, is another attack on her sanity, an attack so fierce that she feels her mind “going numb.” Numbness is a physical sensation that stands as another example of the speaker’s struggle to convey her experience in understandable physical terms.

Lines 9–11
The speaker is now in what... » Complete I felt a Funeral, in my Brain Summary