"I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain"

                Emily Dickinson makes brilliant use of imagery in order to convey her theme regarding death and alienation in her poem “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain.” The poem walks the reader through the stages of the speaker’s “death.” The speaker initially merely envisions the beginning of a funeral in her head; however, as the funeral progresses within her mind, pieces of her body and being slowly begin to fade, in the order that someone who was dying might expect to fade. For example, the speaker’s mind is the closest to go, followed by soul, and then their whole existence. Dickinson’s precise diction is very critical to these descriptions, as well, for she very purposely uses somewhat violent words, such as “treading”,” “beating,” creaking,” and “broke.” With this selection of words, Dickinson implies that the oncoming stages of death did not come upon her gradually or gracefully; rather they seemed to overtake her as though she could already experience her very own funeral before her death had even occurred. The imagery of boxes being lifted from creaking souls greatly contributes to the conveyance of this theme.

                The most potent phrase in the poem is when Dickinson remarks, “As all the Heavens were a Bell, and Being, but an Ear, And I, and Silence, some strange Race wrecked, solitary, here—“ (Dickinson, 776). With this phrase, I was quickly reminded that the poem was focused on alienation rather than death. However, in many ways, I believe that Dickinson is actually intending to compare isolation to a kind of death within the story. As Heaven, or the source of all happiness in the afterlife, is personified by one beautiful bell sound, while life itself is embodied by an Ear with which  to hear this bell sound, the reader desperately explains how she must race against the formidable entity of Silence. In such a symbolic description, Dickinson suggests the idea that, in death, Emily threatened to suffer isolation from all those who remained alive by the fact that her words, thoughts, and feelings would be silenced. Ultimately, just as “Bartleby, the Scrivener” proved the reader how powerful an impact passivity could have the development of alienation, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain’ proves how silence or the lack of communication is also vitally important to creating a sense of alienation for most people.