Student Question
Is the form of "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" appropriate for a poem about dying?
Quick answer:
The form of "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" is appropriate for a poem about dying because it uses allegory to symbolize the speaker's mental breakdown. The funeral serves as a coherent exterior structure reflecting the speaker's internal turmoil. This symbolic structure allows for privacy of feelings while effectively conveying despair and isolation. The poem's imagery helps the reader understand the speaker's mental collapse when "a Plank in Reason, broke."
The poem "I felt a Funeral in my Brain" by Emily Dickinson is in the form of an allegory, a tale with a literal level and one or more symbolic levels; the funeral is an exterior structure that gives coherence to the speaker's mental state. Because the loss of the speaker's mind is simultaneous and tortured, the funeral provides a symbol for what transpires in the speaker's mind, a symbol that does not reveal the inner thoughts of the speaker, thus allowing her feelings some privacy.
Without the structure of the funeral, the reader might have no idea what happens with the speaker's mind. The images in the second and third stanzas clearly convey the speaker's growing sense of despair, and the images in the fourth stanza convey her sense of isolation. Finally, when a "Plank in Reason, broke" the reader understands that the speaker has lost her mind.
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