Topic > Analysis of I Felt a Funeral in My Brain by Emily Dickinson

IndexRhyme style of the poemAnalysis of metaphors as key elements of the works citedI Felt a Funeral in my Brain by Emily Dickinson is an extremely dark poem that portrays a person who is going crazy. The overall vision of the poem is that a funeral is taking place in his brain. A memorial service is underway, with mourners walking back and forth. He describes the loud sounds he hears during the service. At the end of the funeral, he begins to imagine an empty world and his mind begins to collapse, resulting in him not knowing what happened next. Dickinson's poetry is complex and difficult to understand at first glance. To facilitate the understanding of poetry it is necessary to analyze and think about it. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Rhyming Style of Poetry The meter of Dickinson's poem is iambic, meaning it consists of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. Every other line has six syllables per line, while the other lines have about eight syllables. The rhythm of the poem is all over the place with no clear rhyme scheme. The only consistent rhythm is that the poem opens and closes with oblique rhymes. Slant rhymes are rhymes that have similar words but not identical sounds. Most slant rhymes come from words with identical consonants and different vowels, or even the opposite. For example, in the second and fourth lines of the first stanza, Dickinson uses the words “fro” and “although.” These words sound similar but they don't actually rhyme. Dickinson also uses line breaks and dashes within her poem to emphasize what she is trying to portray. She adds dashes to give her control of the narrative and pace of the poem. An example of this is in line 7, “Kept beating — beating — Until I think,” is what Dickinson writes. Hyphens play an important role in the format of the poem and give the reader guidelines on when to pause and emphasize the flow of the poem. The use of repetition and capitalization is also used a lot throughout the poem to show importance and enhance what he is trying to say to the reader. Personification is also another effect of capitalization in this poem. Capitalization turns lifeless words into living things. The perspective of the poem comes from Dickinson herself, as speaker. He is describing what is happening in his mind, without tangibly seeing it but feeling and imagining it. It shows his rapid descent into madness leading to ultimate darkness. It is a petrifying poem for both the speaker and the reader. The speaker experiences the loss of self in the chaos of unconsciousness, and the reader experiences the speaker's descent into madness and his sense of going mad. Analysis of Metaphors as Key Elements of the Poem Metaphors are a huge factor in understanding the meaning of this poem. Dickinson uses metaphors to illustrate how she feels comparing physical things to arbitrary ideas. The funeral represents the speaker's feeling of dying and why he feels this recklessness. This is a simpler metaphor because funerals usually connote death. The funeral here marks the transition from the state of living to the state of death, as well as from sanity to madness, for the speaker. The speaker is observing the funeral while actively participating in it, showing that the "Self" is divided, eventually shattering into pieces by the end of the poem and creating chaos. The entire funeral in the poem is a metaphor for the various stages of his mental breakdown. Other metaphors in the poem include mourners. The mourners express the pain that the speaker feels. In lines 3 and 4, the speaker shares that the..