I felt a funeral in my brain by Emily Dickinson
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"I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" by Emily Dickinson
In Emily Dickinson's ballad "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain", the themes of death and madness are revealed through Dickinson's use of metaphors and imagery. These themes are indicated by the speaker's journey through her own funeral to a faulty plank of Reason that ultimately betrays her.
The funeral is a metaphor for the part of the speaker that is dead, and in the "Box" or casket, opened in the third stanza. She is split in two, with one part of her being the object of the funeral, and the other part of her feeling the funeral going on inside of her "Brain". The funeral explains how the unconscious, or the world inside of her Brain, is taking over any reality or rationality she may still have. In the last stanza, her Reason is a plank that has broken and caused her to fall. The plank is the metaphor for the ultimate death of her sense of Reason, and the emergence of her madness. The metaphor of the mourners represents her unhappiness and pain at losing the only reasonable part of her self. At the end of stanza four, she describes this part of herself as being "some strange Race Wrecked, solitary", metaphors for her state of mind.
Intricate imagery is also used to create the theme of death...