I Felt a Funeral, In My Brain
Summary
The poem I Felt a Funeral, In My Brain by Emily Dickinson describes a psychological state. It depicts a condition of extreme anguish and mental disorder, a situation of psychological torment where the speaker feels all the oppression and powerlessness of a helpless victim and ultimately collapses.
The mental breakdown is seen by the poet as akin to losing consciousness. The critic Judith Farr views this poem as a โmindscapeโ, which takes as its subject the death of consciousness.
Indeed, the narrative is so structured, describing the sensations experienced at different stages on the way to the loss of perception.
It begins with โI feltโ and finishes with the loss of all sensation, noting on the way the failure of the various senses and organs of perception. Farr notes how physiologically accurate this is, corresponding to the stages of an approaching faint. The dizzy spell is prefaced by a mental numbness (the โtreading โ treadingโ of the โBoots of Leadโ). The ringing in the ears that precedes fainting is conveyed through the synaesthetic imagery of โThen Space โ began to tollโ. The fainting spell (โI dropped down, and downโ) and the sinking out of consciousness (โhit a World, at every plungeโ) concludes in the total loss of perception (โand Finished knowing โ then โโ). Yet the concluding dash might suggest survival of some kind, perhaps the continuity of intellect, as Farr suggests, somehow surviving to record the event.
It is worth noting that โBrainโ, โMindโ and โSoulโ were interchangeable terms for the nineteenth-century artist. Indeed, an examination of the manuscript shows that Dickinsonโs first choice for โSoulโ in line 10 was โBrainโ. This experience of traumatic collapse has both psychological and religious connotations.
Dickinson uses the structure of a funeral service and funeral imagery to convey her theme: the box, the mourners, the plank, the burial โ all the paraphernalia of a funeral. But this is a most unreal funeral service. Normally the funeral is sombre, respectful and caring and the ritual is designed to be comforting. But here the โBoxโ is crudely impersonal and the ritual becomes a nightmare of unstoppable activity, as reflected in the grammatical structure of the poem (โtillโ, โwhenโ, โtillโ, โthenโ, โagainโ, โthenโ, โthenโ) and in the imagery of ceaseless activity (โto and froโ, โtreading โ treadingโ, โkept beating โ beatingโ). Even the sounds of the funeral service are experienced as activity as well as sound (โMourners treadingโ, โA Service, like a Drum โ/Kept beatingโ, โlift a Box/And creak across my Soul/With those same Boots of Leadโ, โThen Space โ began to tollโ). There isnโt a single still moment in the poem except for the marvellous image of cosmic alienation in lines 15 and 16.
This unrelenting activity is experienced as oppression by the speaker, who is powerless to react and must suffer what is being done to her. As John Robinson says, she is using the funeral service to define herself as a helpless victim. The sense of victimisation is further enhanced by the fact that what she suffers is only partially understood by her, though keenly felt and heard. The unreal strangeness of the imagery reflects the inscrutable nature of her sufferings (โa Service, like a Drumโ, โall the Heavens were a Bellโ). The unique vantage point of the speaker here, as she is being buried, graphically reinforces this notion of a helpless victim. There is an element of gothic horror to this โ a conscious victim being buried alive and the sensationalism of โcreak across my Soulโ and โBoots of Leadโ. All this adds to the quality of the mental trauma that is the poemโs main theme.
Some readers feel that the main focus of this poem is the actual experience of death, rather than any metaphorical exploration of psychological death: that the poem enacts approaching death, loss of the senses, etc. and that the experience is given an extra frisson of horror through the speakerโs unique vantage point from the coffin. Do you favour this literal interpretation? Perhaps it smacks too much of gothic sensationalism? Perhaps we can read the poem as addressing the issue of death in both the physical and psychological senses? What insights into death does the poem convey?
Themes
● An enactment of mental breakdown, a depiction of the intense suffering of psychological disintegration.
● The loss of order and meaning, intrinsic to breakdown: the sensation of tumbling through space, events have no properly understood cause, senses are confused, space tolls, a plank breaks, etc.
● A charting of the stages of death, the loss of sensation and perception.
โ The nature of the solitary soul, adrift in the universe:
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here โ
This is a vision of lonely suffering, interpreted by some as the effort of the soul to understand its place in the universe.
โ Oppression: the poet as a helpless victim, impotent sufferer.
โ Human alienation: the lack of control over the world or oneโs fate. The image of the living treated as if they were dead emphasises this extreme disunion between self and circumstances.
Questions and Answers
Q. What does the poem I felt a funeral in my brain mean?
Ans. Dickinson uses the metaphor of a funeral to represent the speakerโs sense that a part of her is dying, that is, her reason is being overwhelmed by the irrationality of the unconscious. She is both observer of the funeral and participant, indicating that the Self is divided.
Q. How would you describe the psychological or emotional experience of a funeral in the brain?
Ans. The central metaphor of a funeral in the brain establishes the speakerโs state of mind. The poem also evokes despair through physical metaphors. The funeralโs drum-like โbeating โ beating -โ along with the mournerโs heavy โtreading โ treading -โ affect the mind as if striking it.
Q. How does Dickinson use capitalization in I felt a funeral in my brain?
Ans. Dickinsonโs structural choices develop a central idea of madness in โI felt a Funeral, in my Brain.โ Dickinson capitalizes words that are not proper nouns; emphasizing these words makes the speaker seem strange. The repetition in the poem makes the speakerโs words seem slow.
Q. What elements of the funeral do you think the author is using to describe insanity?
Ans. The correct response is the one about loss. In the first two stanzas, the author clearly associates the sounds of the funeral with the feeling of her โmind going numb,โ indicating that the funeral is associated with her losing her mind.