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The Tangible Funeral
In Emily Dickinson’s haunting ballad “I Felt A Funeral In My Brain,” the speaker delineates a traumatic decent into madness, irrationality, and depression. This descent is described chiefly through the initial conceit of the speaker experiencing a ‘funeral’ in her brain, and augmented by Dickinson’s use of literary devices. ... To end the lines on an upbeat gives both the reader and the speaker a certain euphoric detachment from the proceedings of the funeral. ... The speaker “felt a funeral in [her] brain;” she heard “A service like a drum,” she “heard them (mourners) lift a box,” and she “dropped down and down” (1,6,9,18). The speaker can feel, and hear, and but is herself detached from the funeral and unable to stop the decent, as though she were “but an ear,” to the events (14). ...
What makes “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain” such a haunting piece is its tangibility: Dickinson’s ability to create in the reader the same feelings and sensations as the speaker.
Approximate Word count = 708
Approximate Pages = 2.8
(250 words per page double spaced)
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