Student Question
In "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain," how does the line "And then a Plank in Reason, broke" represent the central theme?
Quick answer:
The line "And then a Plank in Reason, broke" symbolizes the speaker's loss of sanity in "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain." The "plank" represents the fragile connection to rationality, akin to a narrow board over water. Its breaking signifies the speaker's descent into madness, crossing from sanity to insanity, life to death, and order to disorder. This metaphor highlights the poem's central theme of mental collapse and existential transition.
The "plank of Reason" that is breaking is the speaker's grasp on sanity. The metaphor, then, is of the tenuous hold she has had on its retention. A plank is a narrow board, often suspended over water. When the plank breaks (reason, sanity) the speaker feels that she has plunged into the abyss.
The plank too, is a metaphor for crossing from one place (or state) to another. There are two "shores," if you will, in this poem. Sanity and insanity, life and death,and perhaps even another, order and disorder. It is the metaphor of the plank that has carried the speaker thus far. When it breaks, she is delivered from sanity, life, and order to insanity, death, and disorder.
By the way, anthologies often leave out this final stanza. Here are those last lines:
And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down and down
And hit the world at every plunge,
And finished, knowing --then --
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