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Analysis of Elements of Poetry Used by Emily Dickinson
1。In Emily Dickinson’s “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” the speaker tells of the loss of her mind. It is an allegorical description of her feeling that the normal function of her mind had ended, just as the normal function of a person happens when they die. The “funeral in her brain” is a metaphor for the death of the mind. According to Paul deMann, “Thus the allegory of the funeral attempts to exteriorize and give a temporal structure to what is in fact interior and simultaneous.”
By utilizing the most common of events, the speaker alienates herself from her feelings and can freely express her thoughts without addressing that these thoughts are her own torments of the mind. It allows her the freedom to present what tortures her most, without granting us permission to enter into the privacy of her own feelings.
This makes sense in that the poem begins with her “feeling” the funeral, then describing, not “feeling” throughout the narrative of the funeral, until the middle of the second to last stanza, when she returns to her own reaction of the event, and informs us that it is about what is happening to her inside of herself, and we are reminded that it is an allegorical representation of her mental state and not the story of an actual funeral.
Cynthia Griffin Wolf tells us that “Without the systematic, articulated ceremony of the funeral rites, a reader might have no idea what the speaker was describing, and the poem would lack coherence and unity; without the steady distortion of the terms by which self is defined, the reader could not apprehend the full experiential anguish of the process.”
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2。Welcome to the land of symbols, imagery, and wordplay. Before you travel any further, please know that there may be some thorny academic terminology ahead. Never fear, Shmoop is here. Check out our "How to Read a Poem" section for a glossary of terms.
A Funeral
This poem is way more fun if you imagine there's really a funeral inside this woman's mind. A bunch of tiny people have crawled in through her ear and set up a tiny society for themselves – kind of like those cartoon elves who live inside a tree and bake cookies all day (how did they get inside that tree?!). Anyway, the funeral is not a simile; it's a metaphor. Her mind doesn't just feel like a funeral; the funeral is really taking place. Funerals are religious services, and this one is clearly a Christian funeral of the kind you might find at a quaint Protestant church in Dickinson's hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts. Well, you might if you lived in the 19th century.
•Line 1: We can't say it enough: the funeral is a metaphor, not a simile! The speaker doesn't use telltale words like "like" or "as" that would identify the funeral as a simile. Moreover, it's an extended metaphor, because it continues throughout the entire poem.
•Line 2: The treading of the Mourners "to and fro," or back and forth, introduces a motif of repetitive sounds of motions.
•Lines 5-6: Ah, now there's a simile. Dickinson compares the service to a drum using that telltale word "like."
•Line 9: We assume that the "Box" means the casket in which the body of the dead person will be buried.
•Lines 12-13: In this simile, space is compared to a ringing bell. You might think we had left behind the extended funeral metaphor, but Dickinson seems to be describing the end of the service, when it was customary to ring the church bells.
Body, Mind, and Soul
Dickinson mixes references to physical, intellectual, and spiritual reality as if all three were really the same reality, after all. She seems to make no distinction between the "Brain" and the "Mind," for example. If you really wanted to dig into this poem, you could write a whole paper on the different ways in which the speaker refers to parts of herself.
•Line 1: The central metaphor of the poem is that there is a funeral going on inside the speaker's brain. Unlike "mind," which refers to the powers of intelligence, "brain" usually refers to the physical mass inside our skulls: the grey matter.
•Line 4: "Sense" – the ability to perceive objects with our senses – is compared metaphorically to something "breaking" through the floor of the room where the funeral is being held.
•Line 8: Dickinson is super-sneaky here. The "Mind" can't go "numb," because minds are not physical objects. Rather, the mind is the location of our intelligence. "Numb" is a metaphor.
•Line 9: In this continuation of the funeral metaphor, the "Soul" is compared to the wooden floor that the mourners walk over with the casket.
•Line 14: "Being" is the most general word that the speaker uses to describe herself. It means, simply, "Existence."
•Line 17: Whereas, in line 9, the "Soul" was compared to a wood floor, now the metaphor shifts slightly and "Reason" is the floor that breaks. Does Dickinson think "Reason" and "Soul" are the same thing?
Weight
Usually, to "walk all over someone" is just a figure of speech, but the speaker of the poem is actually being walked on. In our reading of the poem, the speaker is represented as either being the wood floor, as being below the wood floor, or as being in a coffin that rests on the floor. The language of creaking and breaking earlier in the poem puts us on notice that the floor isn't exactly safe. Sure enough, one of the planks breaks, and the speaker goes tumbling, tumbling down.
•Lines 3-4: These lines introduce the idea that the speaker is being "walked on."
•Line 10: The mourners carrying the coffin "creak" across her soul as if it were a wood floor. Watch out! That thing's not stable!
•Line 11: Hard to tell if this line is a metaphor that means "super, ridiculously heavy boots," or if they really are wearing boots made of one of the heaviest elements on earth.
•Line 17: In this metaphor, reason is compared to the wood floor. A plank in the floor breaks, causing the speaker to begin an epic fall.
•Line 19: The speaker hits a "World" at every stage of her fall. We think this is a metaphor, if only we knew what she meant by "World."
Sound
If this poem had a soundtrack, it would be a bunch of loud, percussive noises, crackling, and footsteps. The speaker seems to be someplace where she can't actually see the funeral take place. But she hears everything. In the fourth stanza, she compares herself explicitly to a giant ear. She feels violated by all this noise – she can't control whether she hears it or not.
•Line 6: This simile likens the funeral service to the beating of a drum.
•Line 9: The speaker hears – but doesn't see – the mourners creak across her soul. Maybe she is underneath the wood floor, listening to the funeral above.
•Lines 12-14: These lines contain an extended simile. The Heavens are compared to a bell and Being to an ear.
•Line 15: "Silence" is personified as someone belonged to the same "strange Race" as the speaker. Silence and the speaker sound lonely.
1。In Emily Dickinson’s “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” the speaker tells of the loss of her mind. It is an allegorical description of her feeling that the normal function of her mind had ended, just as the normal function of a person happens when they die. The “funeral in her brain” is a metaphor for the death of the mind. According to Paul deMann, “Thus the allegory of the funeral attempts to exteriorize and give a temporal structure to what is in fact interior and simultaneous.”
By utilizing the most common of events, the speaker alienates herself from her feelings and can freely express her thoughts without addressing that these thoughts are her own torments of the mind. It allows her the freedom to present what tortures her most, without granting us permission to enter into the privacy of her own feelings.
This makes sense in that the poem begins with her “feeling” the funeral, then describing, not “feeling” throughout the narrative of the funeral, until the middle of the second to last stanza, when she returns to her own reaction of the event, and informs us that it is about what is happening to her inside of herself, and we are reminded that it is an allegorical representation of her mental state and not the story of an actual funeral.
Cynthia Griffin Wolf tells us that “Without the systematic, articulated ceremony of the funeral rites, a reader might have no idea what the speaker was describing, and the poem would lack coherence and unity; without the steady distortion of the terms by which self is defined, the reader could not apprehend the full experiential anguish of the process.”
---
2。Welcome to the land of symbols, imagery, and wordplay. Before you travel any further, please know that there may be some thorny academic terminology ahead. Never fear, Shmoop is here. Check out our "How to Read a Poem" section for a glossary of terms.
A Funeral
This poem is way more fun if you imagine there's really a funeral inside this woman's mind. A bunch of tiny people have crawled in through her ear and set up a tiny society for themselves – kind of like those cartoon elves who live inside a tree and bake cookies all day (how did they get inside that tree?!). Anyway, the funeral is not a simile; it's a metaphor. Her mind doesn't just feel like a funeral; the funeral is really taking place. Funerals are religious services, and this one is clearly a Christian funeral of the kind you might find at a quaint Protestant church in Dickinson's hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts. Well, you might if you lived in the 19th century.
•Line 1: We can't say it enough: the funeral is a metaphor, not a simile! The speaker doesn't use telltale words like "like" or "as" that would identify the funeral as a simile. Moreover, it's an extended metaphor, because it continues throughout the entire poem.
•Line 2: The treading of the Mourners "to and fro," or back and forth, introduces a motif of repetitive sounds of motions.
•Lines 5-6: Ah, now there's a simile. Dickinson compares the service to a drum using that telltale word "like."
•Line 9: We assume that the "Box" means the casket in which the body of the dead person will be buried.
•Lines 12-13: In this simile, space is compared to a ringing bell. You might think we had left behind the extended funeral metaphor, but Dickinson seems to be describing the end of the service, when it was customary to ring the church bells.
Body, Mind, and Soul
Dickinson mixes references to physical, intellectual, and spiritual reality as if all three were really the same reality, after all. She seems to make no distinction between the "Brain" and the "Mind," for example. If you really wanted to dig into this poem, you could write a whole paper on the different ways in which the speaker refers to parts of herself.
•Line 1: The central metaphor of the poem is that there is a funeral going on inside the speaker's brain. Unlike "mind," which refers to the powers of intelligence, "brain" usually refers to the physical mass inside our skulls: the grey matter.
•Line 4: "Sense" – the ability to perceive objects with our senses – is compared metaphorically to something "breaking" through the floor of the room where the funeral is being held.
•Line 8: Dickinson is super-sneaky here. The "Mind" can't go "numb," because minds are not physical objects. Rather, the mind is the location of our intelligence. "Numb" is a metaphor.
•Line 9: In this continuation of the funeral metaphor, the "Soul" is compared to the wooden floor that the mourners walk over with the casket.
•Line 14: "Being" is the most general word that the speaker uses to describe herself. It means, simply, "Existence."
•Line 17: Whereas, in line 9, the "Soul" was compared to a wood floor, now the metaphor shifts slightly and "Reason" is the floor that breaks. Does Dickinson think "Reason" and "Soul" are the same thing?
Weight
Usually, to "walk all over someone" is just a figure of speech, but the speaker of the poem is actually being walked on. In our reading of the poem, the speaker is represented as either being the wood floor, as being below the wood floor, or as being in a coffin that rests on the floor. The language of creaking and breaking earlier in the poem puts us on notice that the floor isn't exactly safe. Sure enough, one of the planks breaks, and the speaker goes tumbling, tumbling down.
•Lines 3-4: These lines introduce the idea that the speaker is being "walked on."
•Line 10: The mourners carrying the coffin "creak" across her soul as if it were a wood floor. Watch out! That thing's not stable!
•Line 11: Hard to tell if this line is a metaphor that means "super, ridiculously heavy boots," or if they really are wearing boots made of one of the heaviest elements on earth.
•Line 17: In this metaphor, reason is compared to the wood floor. A plank in the floor breaks, causing the speaker to begin an epic fall.
•Line 19: The speaker hits a "World" at every stage of her fall. We think this is a metaphor, if only we knew what she meant by "World."
Sound
If this poem had a soundtrack, it would be a bunch of loud, percussive noises, crackling, and footsteps. The speaker seems to be someplace where she can't actually see the funeral take place. But she hears everything. In the fourth stanza, she compares herself explicitly to a giant ear. She feels violated by all this noise – she can't control whether she hears it or not.
•Line 6: This simile likens the funeral service to the beating of a drum.
•Line 9: The speaker hears – but doesn't see – the mourners creak across her soul. Maybe she is underneath the wood floor, listening to the funeral above.
•Lines 12-14: These lines contain an extended simile. The Heavens are compared to a bell and Being to an ear.
•Line 15: "Silence" is personified as someone belonged to the same "strange Race" as the speaker. Silence and the speaker sound lonely.
参考资料：http://www.shmoop.com/i-felt-a-funeral-in-my-brain/analysis.html
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