The Norwegian painter Edvard Munch once said that "Illness, madness and death were the angels who attended my cradle and have been with me ever since followed throughout his life." ' Similar to Munch's thinking, literary critics use mental collapse and meaninglessness as a central theme to draw attention to the liberation of the character's grip on reality. Emily Dickinson's writing style corresponds to the idea of ​​being plagued by irrationality, mental decline, and death itself. In “I Felt A Funeral, in My Brain,” “It Wasn't Death, For I Arose,” and “I Felt a Cleaving in my Mind,” Emily Dickinson uses hyphens, capitalization, and figurative language to highlight the psychological effects of her self-imposed isolation and the poignant nature of death, immortality and love. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Dickinson's tendency to use hyphens and figurative language highlights her desire to retreat from the world while gripped and paralyzed by the devastating emotion of irrationality. In Dickinson's "I felt a Cleaving in my Mind" there are dashes after almost every line. The dashes after each line allow for pauses, emphasizing the rhythm of the poem. The main focus of this poem delves into one of Dickinson's psychological breakdowns, considering that the word "cleave" means to divide. Because his mind felt like it was falling apart, he attempted to "match it up, seam by seam." The break in the middle of the line emphasizes that the psychological breakdown he was experiencing was unintentional. He hadn't intended to split his "brain," but once he did, he'd tried to put the pieces back together. Dickinson uses the metaphor of a seamstress to express her desire to put the pieces of her mind back together. Although he "tried to match it", his efforts were futile. Dickinson, like the seamstress trying to sew her brain together, is unable to put herself back together in a stable mental state. In the second verse, he wishes to unite his thoughts, but they unravel like a thread of wool. It's as if the ball of yarn couldn't be used to tie together his thoughts. Along with the metaphor in the second stanza, the dashes represent pauses between every other word to draw attention to his mental deterioration. Overall, Dickinson "struggled" to get her mind and thoughts together once everyone left her, as shown through dashes and metaphors. In “I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain,” the stanzas lead the reader into Dickinson's descent into madness. Dickinson feels like the funeral is taking place in her mind. The dashes between the "stomps" indicate that those who attended the funeral are pacing back and forth in her head and she is unable to get them out. As the funeral began, “A service, like a drum – kept beating – beating,” in his mind and was taking over his thoughts. The pauses between lines reveal that Dickinson can only hear the drum-like noise overwhelming her. She compares the noises to a drum because the intensity of the sounds around her seemed as loud as a drum. Throughout the poem, his mental condition worsens as he experiences the funeral. The last verse explains that the metaphorical floorboards begin to crack and as she falls into the endless hole of torture, Dickinson crashes into the world again and again. The last stanza ends with a hyphen and the reader is left with nothing more than a guess at what happened. In both poems, Dickinson's mental decline is prevalent through the use of pauses in the lines and comparative language-340.