I FELT A FUNERAL IN MY BRAIN
Interesting webpage: http://bloggingdickinson.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/i-felt-funeral-in-my-brain.html
THEME: DEATH, PAIN,
ENTRAPMENT, ISOLATION, FEAR
SYMBOL
-
“Funeral in my brain”
o
feeling dead inside, grief, anguish, depression
o
reason is being overwhelmed by the irrationality
of the unconscious
o
insinuates
the fact that the speaker is not only disabled in a physical state, but also
her inner mind is bombarded by the
“treading” and the “ beating”, caused by the “boot of lead”.
o
Throughout
this poem, Dickinson has been illustrated as poultry that is waiting to be
slaughtered - she has chosen to surrender to the reality and wait for the
judgment for her, as if even death is an extravagant desire for her
o
funeral is a formal event, whose rules and
procedures suggest control and order. The control and order implicit in a
funeral contrast ironically with the lack of control and the loss of
rationality that threaten the speaker.
o
funeral marks the passage from one state to
another (life to death), a parallel to the speaker's passing from one stage to
another (sanity to insanity). However, the poet is not observing the funeral
but is feeling it. She is both observer of the funeral and participant,
indicating that the Self is divided.
o
end of the poem, the Self will have shattered
into pieces or chaos.
-
“mourner to and fro”
o
fear of her life being invaded by the “mourners”,
the formality of words such as “funeral” and “service” suggest the idea that
even upon death, her life is under scrutiny.
-
The
continual agony has compelled her to alienate herself from the society and
being reluctant to express any emotion as a result, yet, her
self-defense is being “wrecked” by the “senses breaking through”.
-
“lifting a box” and “creaking across her soul”
o
establish a sense of entrapment that the speaker is
unable to fight against with
o
sense of hopelessness hammers home the fact that
Dickinson has surrendered herself to all the negativity that appears in her
life.
-
“wrecked, solitary, here”
o
admitting utter defeat ® she is completely broken® her being becomes an “ear”
o
the poet’s passivity when presented
with funereal sounds now becomes figurative in this synecdochal image® “being,
but an ear”
o
Her descent into irrationality separates her
from other human beings, making her a member of "some strange race."
Her alienation and inability to communicate are indicated by her being
enveloped by silence.
-
“plank in reason, broke”
o
reasoning breaks ® entrapment within the “box” ® noise establishes such a heaviness that drowns her
STRUCTURE
-
iambic tetrameter and trimetre as a structure
o
the regularity of this rhythm depicts the perpetual
torment as a rigid wall that which is unbreakable
o
shortened trimetre epitomizes the sheer intensity
of pain and signifies the intangible qualities her psyche has been deprived of.
-
In considering the quatrains, we behold the regularity
of the poem to simulate the structure of hymns, suggesting that the pain is
ceaseless and that it is something that the writer cannot break through, in
their judicious employment.
-
pararhyme such as “fro” and “through”
o
highlights the lack of harmony and discordance,
which is derived from the disjointed life of the poet and thereby the
construction of a solid rhyme is not possible for her
-
Were the emergence of enjambement to be regarded
representative of her impairment, the hyphens would be symbols demonstrative of
her attempts to resist the intrusion of others into her fort. It could also be
argued that the hyphen refrains the establishment of solidity
-
Commas emphasizes on the destruction – “wrecked,
solitary, here”
-
In the first three verses of this poem,
the repeated oppressive sounds progressively combine to torture the
persona’s disembodied ear, of the fourth verse. There is an auditory
focus to be seen in the relentless ‘treading’ of the mourners with their ‘boots
of Lead’, the ‘beating’ of the Service and the ‘creaking’ of the coffin – the
slow thumping rhythm continues in the tolling bell of the heavens. The
isolated poet loses conventional reasoning to fall into chasms of desolation.
FEATURES
-
‘the
treading’ of the ‘mourners’
o fear of sound disclosed, ‘the treading’ of
the ‘mourners’, establish the cacophony that continuously disrupt her and
induce a sense of discomfort
o paranoid feeling of being observed without
cessation, generates an overall aura with the feeling of lingering insecurity
-
Although
the poem opens with ‘felt a funeral’, there is no evidence of feelings on
behalf of the ‘mourners’. There is no eulogy, mourning or discussion for the
person who was lost – the speaker
o This illustration is one of total isolation
of the speaker, a distance from the real world and more importantly distant
from the feelings associated with those around her.
-
The
view of the audience has been magnified to such severity that even the positive
things create noise that attack her
-
“Space
began to toll”
o was originally considered as a symbol of
silent emptiness, which the speaker usually deems to be a secure place for her
to remain. Yet in here, even the ‘space - began to toll’ and so as the
‘heavens’ – all this cacophonous noise overwhelmed her to such a degree that
she could not bear but choose to desensitize and dehumanize herself to become
an ‘ear’.
-
deification
of ‘Brain’
o insinuate the fact her ‘Brain’ and ‘Funeral’
are equally important and tie to each other. In the following line, the
‘Mourners’ are being awarded with equal importance with the adoption of
deification again, implying that these people have contributed to the ‘death’
of her ‘Brain’ in the unrelenting assault on her through the use of repetition
– ‘treading, treading’, ‘beating, beating’.
-
Last
word “then”
o "then--,"
does not finish or end her experience but leaves opens the door for the
nightmare-horror of madness.
CONCLUSION
With an imaginary end, there is no definite conclusion for
the poet, yet it is unequivocal that being “as an ear”, with “soul being
creaked”, one is doomed to be “wrecked”
and enveloped by “solitary”.
MAIN QUOTATIONS:
-
“wrecked, solitary, here”
-
“being, but an ear”
-
“my mind was going numb”
-
“mourner treading, beating”
-
“box creaking across my soul, heavens were a
bell”
-
“boots of lead treading”
RHYMES:
-
“fro”,”through”
o
pararhymes: disjointed, lack of harmony
-
“drum”, “numb”
o
lost energy to display her depression and
struggle®surrender
to reality with solid rhyme
-
“down”,”then”
o
no rhyme at all ®
completely lost control ®plunging
into unknown “space”
COMPARISON POEMS:
‘There’s a certain slant of light”
“After great pain, a formal feeling comes!”
“It was not death, for I stood up”
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