Uncertain of the Uncertain
...our soul's search for destiny. The reader can recognize the poem's theme by analyzing the use of personification, the voice of the poem, of speech, metaphors, and representation; all of which help the reader to understand the poem's meaning. The specific forms that Dickinson uses throughout the poems helps convey her message to the reader. In both poems the first word of each line is capitalized as well as other pertinent words signifying the importance of each word to the poem. One poem is written in five quatrains and the other in six quatrains. The way in which each stanza is written in a quatrain gives both poems unity and makes them easy to read. "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" starts to gives the reader a feeling of forward movement through the second and third quatrain. For example, in line 5, Dickinson begins death's journey with a slow, forward movement, which is shown as she writes, "We slowly drove-He knew no haste." The third quatrain seems to speed up as the approaching of death comes closer; the speaker passes “children playing, fields of grain, and the setting sun”. Even though the speaker is heading for death she approaches it in a calm and relaxing frame of mind. The poems starts to slow down a bit to give you a feeling of her readiness, as the speaker prepares you for her final destination, “The Dews grew quivering and chill For only Gossamer, my Gown, My tipper only a Tulle”. Here she is acknowledging her readiness as she is dressed for the occasion in gown made of soft sheer fabrics and her veil. "The reader can sense the speaker’s life slowly ending and her departure will be to a place worthy of her attire. Dickinson’s use of dashes in both poems seems to indicate that the poem is never ending, just as eternity never ends. Life, death, and reincarnation are portrayed in Emily Dickinson's poem "I felt a Funeral in My Brain." The use of words related to death gives the poem a very threatening and dark character. Along with this tone, at the beginning of this poem the feelings of pain and despair are evident. Reading the rest of the poem, I felt that the speaker needed to make a choice between a world of trouble and pain or a life after that brings comfort and peace. This is all part of life’s cycle. Sometimes when life isn’t working in your favor and the cycle of life gets you down, there is peace to be found but you have to wait until your life’s cycle expires. This is reflected clearly at the end of the poem. The speaker lives, passes away, and is reincarnated into this world through the poem's entirety. The beginning of this poem displays strong feelings. The words "I felt" states that the speaker is talking about herself. In the first stanza the phrase "I felt a funeral in my brain," brings forth thoughts of death. The words "funeral" and the word "brain" expresses that thoughts of death was inside the speaker. Also in the first stanza, "and mourners to and fro/kept treading-treading-till it seemed/that sense was breaking through, it seems as though these lines are stating that the speaker is troubled by her inner death that is constantly mourning in her head. The dashes between "treading-treading-,"and “kept beating-beating- till I thought my mind was going numb-“allows you to pause between the words, showing a long, repetitive treading and rhythmic sounds of the drums . The repeating seems to cause a sense of frustration. In conclusion, but yet still in the first quatrain the speaker states that "sense was breaking through” to the reader this could mean that the constant recurrence of treading and beating is now starting to make sense. A sense of relief has come about, assuming that her suffering will soon be over. In the third stanza the speaker seems to feel some frustration by voices opening a box "and then I heard them lift a box and creak across my soul with those same boots of lead." Its seems as though this box ...