‘After Great Pain a formal feeling comes’
Pain/ Entrapment/ Hope and Hopelessness/
Time/ Freedom
Introduction
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The ‘Funeral’ motif in I felt a Funeral, in my Brain conveys the
entrapment, suggesting that she is emotionally dead and has surrendered to the
lack of freedom
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The last night that she lived where she expresses the pain of being trapped in the world that is ‘awful’ to her. She sees being ‘dead’ as a way to escape from the pain
-
‘Despair’
in It was not death, for I stood up that shows the image of her drifting away
from hope / ‘fitted into a frame’:
trapped by society
Central Symbol
Pain/ Entrapment/Hopeless
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(See other sheet)
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Dickinson uses a funeral motif to
express her pain. She compares ‘nerves ’to ‘tombs’, indicating the idea of emotional death
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The ‘nerves sit ceremonious like tombs’ – funeral motif
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They are like mourners in the
funeral. The word ‘ceremonious’
suggests a sense of numbness after pain.
This is rather depressing as the visitors of her funeral seems to be
just observing and question rather than feeling
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The nerves that are supposed to
be transmitters of feelings are turned into stone sarcophagi
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Emphasising the stiffness of
feelings
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‘Lead’
– a common soft and heavy metal as a metaphor for oppression
-
It intensifies the heaviness and
solidity in the poem as referenced in ‘stone’
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Signifies her lack of emotion
Time
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Time is used as a symbol that
gives her pain
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The speaker compares her ‘heart’ to ‘a Quartz contentment’.
Quartz is a crystal used to make watches. The image in the poem could suggests that the
drained, unresponsive state being described has been distilled or crystallised
from the anguish from earlier grief, ‘a
formal feeling’ after the ‘pain’
-
This may be indicating that time
is the reason for her entrapment. It is
a trap that will not release her
-
The speaker compares time to her
entrapment – that they are both unending
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She maybe suggesting that the
entrapment is ‘mechanical’ like a
watch – time ‘[goes] round’ and is
continuous, there is no end to it.
-
Once her pain is ‘outlived’, it will come back again –
like a viscous cycle
In Because I
could not stop for death, time is also a significant indicator of the speaker’s
feeling. She claims that ‘eternity’ in death ‘feels shorter than the day’ she last lived. This juxtaposition of time implies how awful
she thinks life is to her that one day in live feels longer than ‘centuries’ buried in her grave
Structure
-
(See other sheet)
-
First stanza: Iambic beat and
rhyming couplets
o
Enhance the portrayal of the
pain: it is very intense
o
Adds onto the adjective ‘stiff’: the rhythm seems very frigid,
suggesting that she is stuck and has frozen in place.
o
‘The
Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs-‘: the
nerves died and so she is forbidden to create any emotional attachment to the
stanza
-
Middle stanza: begins and ends
with iambic tetrameter but there are five lines
o
Breaking the sense of regularity
sustained in the first stanza
o
Reflecting the severity of the
pain. It gives a heavy feeling that
eventually extends the line
o
This also emphases the idea of
endlessness of time that ‘[goes] round’:
the viscous cycle of pain and sufferings
This contrasts
with the idea of ‘floorless’ in What mystery pervades a well that conveys a sense of
utter freedom. It suggests that there is
no end to their world. The enjambement
of the line emphasises the perfection: it seems like floorlessness elongates
the line. The ‘sedge’, instead of being oppressed by a continuous pain, are free
and limit are beyond reach.
Technique
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Is freedom possible?
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In many of Dickinson’s poems, she
seems to be suggesting that death is the only way to freedom – but is it
actually possible? Can she escape from time?
-
No
o
She includes time indicators like
‘yesterday’ and ‘or centuries before’
o
Signaled by the capital H in ‘He’, the two phrases are questioning
the time when Christ bore the suffering on the cross for man’s sins
o
This is indicating a loss of a
sense of time. It could be a reflection
of how long the pain that the speaker is suffering has been going on
o
Perhaps it has been there for a
long time the speaker is uncertain. If
it has been there and no solution is yet to be found, this may be suggesting
that hope may not be possible
o
Moreover, her conclusion is
directed to despair and surrender
o
‘chill’,
‘stupor’ and ‘letting
go’
o
She mirrors the stages experienced
by suffers of hypothermia
o
The pain of the cold, the dulling
of senses and the final loss of consciousness
o
Describing an emotional state in
powerful physical terms:
o
Comparing the emotional state to
the gradual freezing of a body, shows that she gives up in the fight for
freedom
Yes – In This
life is not conclusion where she hopes for the after life that the ‘soul’ lives on. She sees that as an escape from the
entrapment in her current life – ‘tooth’ symbolising
the constant pain that make her suffer in life, which cannot be healed. She assures herself that with this only
solution: ‘Faith slips – and laughs, and rallies –‘
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