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Emily Dickinson's I Felt A Funeral, In My Brain

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The first stanza of Emily Dickinson’s poem “I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain” hones in on the noxious idea of Dickinson’s own death, through creating a sad and dark mood. The first line, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” talks about a loss of memories and images in her brain (1). It is as if her thoughts are gone from her mind, the most central and essential part of the body, and she is saying goodbye to them, like a funeral does for a person. Because she is a writer, not being able to express herself through words, which she uses her brain for, would be a nightmare for her. Dickinson’s diction choices, such as “treading” and “sense breaking through” portray an internal fight occurring, with sense finally being the concept to tip her over, making
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Dickinson's poem “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” and Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” they both have a connection with insanity or madness. Dickinson’s poem has two meanings, a literal meaning and a figurative meaning. The literal meaning is the process of the funeral, the figurative meaning is the speaker losing awareness and sanity. Poe’s short story is about insanity that turns into a deeper meaning, that is obsession with getting rid of something, that gets progressively worse as the story goes on. The narrator and the speaker’s sanity deteriorates overtime.

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Throughout her poem, “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –,” the speaker of the poem is dying in her deathbed surrounded by loved ones, and how she is experiencing a memory of death and how she is enduring it. As the people at the deathbed are “gathering firm” around her, they are in an understanding that she will die and are waiting for her demised (Dickinson). The “eyes” of the beloved ones were flowing of tears and crying to the dying loved one of the deathbed (Dickinson). Throughout Dickinson’s poem, no happiness is brought upon inside the poem because all that the author sees the theme of death as sadness and

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And then I heard them life a Box, And creak across my Soul”. The reader can understand that the narrator isn’t really attending a funeral, but is instead comparing her losing her sense and sanity to a death at a funeral. Her use of punctuation also showcases how mad she is. A quote that supports this is,” And Being, but an Ear, And I, and Silence, some strange Race”. Dickinson is giving making the ear a person as if to say she only listens but she is silent and is unable to express

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