Emily Dickinson-Unit 20

"I felt a Funeral in my Brain". Dickinson poems have come to be known by their first lines, which are used in place of titles, but are not actual titles and should not be treated as such. Dickinson uses the metaphor of a funeral to represent the speaker's sense that a part of her is dying, that is, her reason is being overwhelmed by the irrationality of the unconscious. A funeral is an appropriate image for this ordeal. The most obvious connotation with a funeral is death. It was published in Poems without the last stanza, through the removal of the terrifying stanza not only becomes less frightening, but the poem may be interpreted as a discourse on death rather than as the description of a psychic breakdown. Todd deleted stanzas illustrating the theme of the descent into madness because she feared they would upset readers, and for an additional reason: she had grouped Dickinson's poems in four categories (Life, love, Nature, and Time and Eternity) and by omitting the last stanza she could easily fit the altered version within the last category. The poem is not about actual death in a biological sense, but about the death of consciousness, which is linked to the experience of depression. The semantic oddness of the first line makes it clear that the poet is working on a figurative level, because nobody can literally "feel" a funeral in the brain It is the feeling of a funeral that occurs in the speaker's brain while experiencing a disturbed mental state. The articulated ceremony of the funeral serves both to exteriorize and to give structure to a process that is internal and chaotic. The mourners tread to and fro, a church service is conducted, the pallbearers (portador) carry the casket to the graveyard and place it on a plank laid across the grave while, in the belfry (campanario), the bell tolls its monotonous knell (toque de difuntos). In the fifth stanza, the plank (table) suddenly breaks and the coffin, instead of being lowered on ropes into the ground, drops down bumping against the sides of the deep grave until it comes to a halt in the darkness at the bottom. All.

"I felt a Funeral in my Brain" Book. The extended metaphor of the funeral illustrates a mental process that is characterized by monotony and repetitiveness, conveyed by the sense of hearing: the steps, the drum, the bell. The spatial setting, suggested by the claustrophobic environment of the funeral, is also important. In this gloomy atmosphere, the mind becomes numb. The last line of the fourth stanza, "Wrecked, solitary, here" draws the readers' attention to a different setting: that of an alien land where a shipwrecked mariner endures a solitude compared to that of the corpse in the coffin. Instead of expanding on this new metaphor, the poet returns to the funeral and introduces the final element of surprise. When "a Plank in Reason" breaks, the speaker plunges into an abyss of unknowing, swept up in a vacuum of chaos. Dickinson's use of one's funeral subverts this convention in an original manner and with dramatically effective results. We hear her mature voice as she records in the past tense a sequence of mental events that may reflect a former personal crisis. Her detached tone and the absence of emotive comment in her recollection render the poem exceptionally poignant (conmovedor, emotivo). Self-evaluation: The last stanza has all of the following effects upon the poem: terrifying, clearly associated with a disturbed mental state, clearly related to the confrontation with existential dread. The poem evokes all the terror of the isolated individual. It charts (trazar) the stages in the speaker's loss of consciousness. It establishes and orderly progression of thoughts through a recognizable sequence of events. All.

"I felt a Funeral in my Brain" Litcharts. Emily Dickinson wrote "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" in 1861, the beginning of what is regarded as her most creative period. The poem employs Dickinson's characteristic use of metaphor and rather experimental form to explore themes of madness, despair, and the irrational nature of the universe. Dickinson depicts an unnerving series of events based around a "funeral" that unfolds within the speaker. Starting out deep within the speaker's mind, the poem gradually expands to probe cosmic mysteries whose answers only come in the form of silence. Summary The speaker feels as though a funeral service is taking place within his or her own mind. It feels like the funeral attendees are pacing back and forth inside the speaker's head, so much so that whatever they're walking on might break under the strain and then cause reason itself to fall through the newly created hole in the speaker's mind. The mourners finally take their seats for the funeral service. Yet this service doesn't contain any words. Instead, the speaker can only make out a repetitive, drum-like noise. This noise overwhelms this speaker, causing the speaker's mind to go blank, as if numb. Now the service ends and the funeral procession begins. The mourners lift a coffin and carry it as they walk across the speaker's soul, which creaks like an old wooden floor. Everyone in the funeral procession wears heavy boots made out of lead, which is why their walking once again puts such a strain on the speaker's mind. Suddenly, there's the sound of a bell ringing, but rather than coming from a single source it seems to be coming from the whole world at once. Even the sky (and possibly Heaven itself) rings like a bell. The speaker says that people exist only to listen to the world's ringing. The speaker—whose mind has been reduced to a numb silence—feels as though he or she is no longer human but instead has become some strange creature. The speaker is alone in his or her own body and mind, as if shipwrecked there. Finally, one of the metaphorical floorboards in the speaker's rational mind does break, creating a hole through which the speaker falls further and further down. While falling, the speaker seems to collide with entire worlds, until the speaker's mind shuts down altogether and the speaker is no longer able to understand anything at all. Just as the speaker is about the say what comes after this state, the poem ends. All.

"I felt a Funeral in my Brain" Litcharts--Themes. Madness Dickinson's poem depicts the difficulty of understanding the mysterious thoughts and feelings that happen inside people. Often interpreted as chronicling a nightmarish descent into madness, the poem can be read as depicting the terror and helplessness that accompany losing one’s grip on reality. Throughout the poem, the speaker’s mind seems passive and confused. Indeed, the “Funeral” of the opening line can arguably be read as a reference to the death of the speaker’s reason or sanity. As the funeral’s “Mourners” repetitively tread through the speaker’s mind, their steps seem to wear down whatever is holding “Sense” back. The speaker waits for “Sense” to come “breaking through”—basically, for meaning and reason to return. Alternatively, “Sense breaking through” could imply the fragility of that sense itself, further reflecting the disordered, easily-shattered nature of the speaker’s mind. In either case, sense—physical or rational—never returns; the mind goes “numb” in response to the drum-like “beating” of the funeral service. This strange simile evokes a sense of maddening, thudding repetition, perhaps representative of the—rather paradoxical—awareness of the fact that the mind is deteriorating. In other words, the “funeral” hammers home the death of the speaker’s sanity. The speaker can’t escape the knowledge that his or her knowledge is collapsing . The mourners carry a “Box”—perhaps a coffin containing the speaker’s reason—as the speaker is left “Wrecked, solitary, here” in a space unfamiliar even to him- or herself. This loss of sanity is thus a painful, isolating experience. All.

"I felt a Funeral in my Brain" Litcharts--Themes. Indeed, the poem’s initial conceit, of a funeral in the brain, summons an elaborate vision of the mind’s structure as being full of mysterious, inaccessible elements. For instance, the first stanza basically asks readers to imagine the speaker’s mind as a two-floor structure. The speaker only has partial access to this structure, listening from below to the funeral on the second floor. Additionally, the proceedings of the funeral itself are secret and hard to perceive. They are “felt” and “heard” rather than seen. And again, the service doesn’t contain words, but rather beats “like a Drum.” Because of all this secrecy, the speaker almost becomes a stranger in his or her own mind. These metaphorical events have taken on a life of their own, reflecting an increasing sense of psychological dislocation; in other words, the speaker becomes ever more isolated from his or her own thoughts. In the last stanza, “Reason” breaks and the speaker plunges “down and down” into—well, it’s unclear, which is part of the point! The image of falling that dominates this stanza shows how the speaker’s mind has finally lost all control. Finally, the speaker is “Finished knowing.” The “then -” that ends the poem represents an ultimate unknowability: the speaker can’t even say what comes next. The rational mind, in effect, has shut down. Ultimately, the poem evokes a sense of wonder and terror as it traces out a path that leads to inner destruction and, finally, a total absence of rational awareness altogether. All.

"I felt a Funeral in my Brain" Litcharts--Themes. The Nature of Despair Throughout the poem the speaker references mourning, numbness, and a loss of control. Using those characterizations as guideposts, readers can think of the poem as offering an idiosyncratic depiction of despair. The speaker presents no explanation or solution. Instead, the poem tracks despair from its onset to the darkest abyss of isolation. The central metaphor of a funeral in the brain establishes the speaker’s state of mind. The first two lines clue readers in: the speaker’s brain contains a “Funeral” and “Mourners.” Something has died within the speaker, and the speaker’s mind mourns that loss. Rather than give a specific cause for this feeling, however, the speaker lets it remain ambiguous. Despair becomes a mysterious phenomenon without a clear cause. The proceedings then continue for three stanzas, as the mourners sit for a service and carry a “Box,” (i.e. a coffin) through the speaker. This suggests that despair can feel like a funeral procession for an unknown person. It creates a feeling of anonymity and confusion. Additionally, by taking up three stanzas, the funeral depicts how despair can seem unending, always finding new ways to make one’s life bleaker. The poem also evokes despair through physical metaphors. The funeral’s drum-like “beating - beating -” along with the mourner’s heavy “treading - treading -” affect the mind as if striking it. They cause the mind to go “numb.” Just as repeated pounding can cause skin to lose sensation, so here the speaker’s inner bleakness prevents the mind from thinking or feeling. Next the mourners’ feet become “Boots of Lead.” The speaker feels an increased heaviness inside. Because of this heaviness, the soul can only “creak” mournfully. All. Finally, all this beating and heaviness causes something to snap in the final stanza (“then a plank in Reason, broke”). The speaker loses hold of certainty and falls completely into an abyss (“And I dropped down, and down”). Again, the speaker’s mind gets repeatedly “hit,” this time by the multitude of “World[s]” that populate the universe, until reaching a final numbness. That physicality is compounded with a sense of loneliness, of being trapped within the mind. This loneliness stems from a dawning awareness of the enormity of the universe. Readers see this most clearly in the fourth stanza, when the speaker is “Wrecked, solitary, here.” “Here” can be seen as representing the inescapable isolation of the self, how each person is trapped within the “here” of their own minds. The immensity of the universe—whose “Heavens” blare loudly like bells and whose plunging depths contain an unending series of alternate “Worlds”—dwarfs the speaker. By the end of the poem, even the mysterious “Mourners” have disappeared, leaving the speaker to fall down into this abyss totally alone. Thus after depicting a kind of inner mourning, the poem comes to represent despair as a force that beats the mind to numbness, heightens the effects of loneliness, and finally throws the speaker down a pit of isolation.

"I felt a Funeral in my Brain" Litcharts--Themes. The Irrational Universe As the poem progresses, the speaker undergoes increasingly broad visions of the world. In these visions, reason—the ability to find order and meaning in the world—is seen as a human invention that the unknowable universe gradually breaks down. This can be thought of as a complement to the theme of madness in the poem: the speaker loses “Sense” specifically because the speaker is exposed to the senselessness of the universe. In the final three stanzas, the poem expands dramatically, leading the inner space of the mind into contact with the larger universe. Note how, in the third stanza, the sound from the creaking of the soul and the stomping of the “Boots of Lead” transforms into the “toll” of the entirety of “Space.” This moment seamlessly transforms the inner world (“the soul”) into the outer world (“Space). “Toll” here references the ringing of a bell. It’s as if the whole world, even its empty spaces, has suddenly filled with a mysterious sound whose source can’t be placed or explained. This sound also has an ominous quality to it (think how frightening such a moment would be). Since Dickinson’s poems often speculate on the existence of God, this can be read as a moment of confrontation between the speaker and a terrifying, God-like force, a kind of divine noise that fills the universe. All. This in turn leads the speaker to speculate on the mind’s place in the universe, saying, “Being” is “but an Ear.” Existence thus becomes passive; things exist only to be present to the world, to perceive but not to explain. This line signals that the speaker has come to a new understanding of what it means to be human. Or rather, the speaker seems to have become something that’s almost not human at all—“some strange Race” that exists, along with silence, as the means by which the universe makes itself known. It’s as if the speaker’s journey has simplified the speaker's mind, reducing it to this state. (This state also can serve as a model for the poet. That is, the poet can only “listen” to the universe as intently as possible, not explain it.). When the poem began, it implicitly compared the speaker’s mind to a building. That building's collapse represents the collapse of order and reason, so that the speaker confronts an endless universe that cannot be explained through human means. When the speaker says “a Plank in Reason, broke,” the floorboards of the mind finally snap. By explicitly associating these boards with “Reason,” the speaker treats rationality as a manmade structure, one that can be broken by external forces. In other words, the universe doesn’t obey the supposedly rational rules created by people; in fact, it actively works to destroy them. The final collapse of reason coincides with a vision of the universe as an abyss that contains “a World, at every plunge.” That is, the world contains many worlds, or infinite possibilities. There’s nothing exciting about this, however, as the speaker bangs against these “worlds” without being able to grasp any of them. This exposure provides an overwhelming glimpse of the universe’s mystery and complexity—the way it seems ultimately irrational and unknowable to human beings. And it is this awareness, ironically, that causes the speaker to be "Finished knowing" altogether.

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”. Line 1 This first line introduces the conceit that will guide the poem as the speaker compares his or her state of mind to a funeral. This initial comparison allows readers to draw a host of inferences about what's going on with the speaker. First off, funerals, especially in Western culture, represent a time of sadness, bleakness, and even despair. People mourn by wearing black and expressing a somber attitude. The Puritan tradition—the religious culture at the root of the history of New England, where Dickinson grew up—emphasized piety and moral seriousness over gaiety. Already, then, the poem takes on a rather somber and perhaps mysterious tone. the speaker has placed the poem in the past tense ("felt"). Whatever's going to happen in the poem has already happened; the speaker's on the other side of it. Notice, too, how it's left totally unclear who exactly this funeral is for. This creates an air of mystery in the events that follow. The odd capitalization of this line will also recur throughout the poem, suggesting that this is meant to be taken figuratively—that is, that each of these capitalized nouns are being used as broad, symbolic stand-ins for the poem's thematic ideas about death, sense, and reason. The quick caesura also creates a halting, almost uncertain rhythm; already the speaker must pause to clarify his or her thoughts. Finally, this funeral takes place in the "Brain." Rather than taking place in the abstract region of, say, the "mind," the poem locates itself directly in the speaker's body. This line, then, prepares readers to accept that the metaphorical, emotional, and even mystical events of the poem will all in some way relate to the speaker's own physical self. Here, readers can almost picture a tiny funeral service happening inside the speaker's skull. This isn't to that the metaphor should be taken literally, but that this possibility prepares readers for future gray areas when they might lose track of the metaphor's vehicle and tenor—in other words, for when the poem's extended metaphor becomes more complex, harder to map onto the poem's lines themselves as the speaker's reason begins to break down. All.

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”. Lines 2-3 Already in the second line the poem complicates its initial conceit. The metaphor doesn't proceed predictably; it doesn't detail, as readers might expect, how sad the funeral is, emphasizing a sense of loss. Instead, it picks up on a small element of the funeral—the pacing of the attendees. This pacing has been driving the speaker crazy—in the colloquial sense but also, as will become apparent later in the poem, perhaps literally as well. What's also strange about choosing to go in this direction with the metaphor is that the speaker seems to have started taking it literally. On one hand, readers can of course think of this moment as representing the way thoughts (especially negative ones) can become obsessive, repeating themselves over and over, as if pacing through your mind. At the same time, the poem injects this comparison with no small amount of mystery. Who exactly are the "Mourners"? Dickinson's characteristic use of capitalization, which expressively draws attention to important words, again serves to transform them into proper nouns. Instead of simply being a metaphor, these "Mourners" seem to become independent beings that have taken over the speaker's mind. Additionally, Dickinson inverts the syntax of this phrase, which would more naturally read "And Mourners kept treading - treading - to and fro." On a purely technical level, switching up the word order allows there to be a slant rhyme between "fro" and "through," thus maintaining the poem's ballad stanza rhyme scheme. It also allows Dickinson to maintain an iambic meter.Here, switching up the syntax reflects the speaker's disorientation. It conveys how the speaker is in a mental state where it's difficult to get words out in the right order. All.

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”. Lines 3-4 Now the speaker introduces a whole new set of mechanics and spatiality to the poem. The mourner's pacing has worn down the metaphorical floor of the speaker's mind, so much so that it seems like a hole might form, through which "Sense" will fall through. "Sense" here has a range of significations including reason, rationality, and meaning. This phrase, "till it seemed / That Sense was breaking through - " offers a heap of possible interpretations, so let's take some time to parse them out. First off, the image of "Sense ... breaking through" implies that something divides the speaker's mind: on one side is sense, which is about to break through to the other side. Because of the previous image of the pacing mourners, it makes sense (no pun intended) to associate this divide with the floor that the mourners are pacing on and wearing down. Readers might imagine the speaker listening from the floor below the funeral, expecting "Sense" to come tumbling down through a hole worn into the ceiling. Alternatively, readers could imagine the speaker right there in the funeral itself, watching sense about to fall through a crack in the floor. In the first scenario, the speaker waits for sense to return. In the second, the speaker feels like he or she about to lose it. As often happens with Dickinson's metaphors, readers don't have to (and probably shouldn't) pick a single interpretation. Rather, readers can glean from both these scenarios that the speaker's mind has become compartmentalized, leaving reason in a precarious state. Either the speaker's about to lose sense or about to gain it, but either way the speaker isn't in full possession of his or her faculties. Additionally, it's not clear that the poem is taking place within a kind of inner space of the mind. In the space of four lines, the poem has taken a straightforward conceit ("I feel like there's a funeral inside of me") and allowed it to create a whole world. Though readers are still vaguely aware of what's being compared to what (the mind is like a room that reason might fall out of at any moment), the poem has also begun dismantling the strict divide between metaphor and reality. In some sense, the poem is literally talking about the spaces of the mind that reason passes through. And, because the poem specifically deals with reason's precariousness (a state we might be inclined to call madness), there's no assurance the speaker has any interest in maintaining a distinction between metaphor and reality. In other words, if the speaker is talking about a journey into madness, then allowing metaphors to become literal is part of the point. Perhaps that's exactly what madness is, in this poem. All.

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”. Lines 5-7 Now the funeral actually commences. One strange thing about how Dickinson constructs her metaphors is that each additional line seems to revise readers' knowledge of what's been going on so far. This whole time, the funeral hadn't even begun yet! In retrospect, the whole first stanza served as preamble, a wake, to what only begins to happen in the second—the actual funeral service. Yet, strangely, the service contains no words. It only beats "like a Drum." The mourners' pacing has ceased as they take seats for the service, but this wordless beating replaces the sermon. So, on one hand, we have a speaker relaying to us (the readers) in words that happens in his or her mind. On the other hand, those happening are explicitly wordless. If the service does contain words, they can't be made out by the speaker. So, while the speaker can communicate with us, the speaker can't, it seems, communicate with what's going on in his or her own mind. The drumbeat of the service also replaces the traditional instrumentation of the church organ. Whereas an organ can produce a multitude of notes, harmonies, and melodies, this drum simply beats repetitively (much like the mourners' treading in the previous stanza; indeed, the epizeuxis of "beating - beating" again appears in the third line of the stanza ). Rather than evoking the richness of human feeling, the drumbeat represents a kind of deadening, an inability to achieve proper expression. Recall also Dickinson's uncertain relationship with religion. Here, the poem shirks a representation of traditional Christian funerals in favor of something stranger, less traditionally articulate. This representation creates a rather paradoxical emotional atmosphere. The sadness associated with funerals gets offset by the speaker's feeling of removal from the actual proceedings. It's as if the speaker contains a sadness that he or she doesn't have full access to. Coupled with the strangeness of the funeral service, this creates a sort of terror—terror at not being able to grasp what's happening in the speaker's own mind. This can also be thoughts is also a form of despair, an unplaceable sadness whose source the speaker can't pinpoint. All.

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”. Lines 7-8 The end of the second stanza refreshes readers' window into the speaker's emotional state. Throughout the poem so far, there's been a repetitive striking within the speaker's mind, whether from the mourners' feet or from the service's beating. Like skin hit so many times it loses feeling, the speaker's mind also goes "numb." The speaker loses the ability to make sense of what's happening in his or her own mind. The stanza's final line reverses the expectations of the preceding "till I thought." Instead of the speaker reaching a thought that offers a definite conclusion as to what's going on inside his or her own head, the speaker ultimately isn't able to think at all. This numbness can be read as a kind of despair, a growing sense that the speaker can't be fully present to his or her own thoughts and feelings. One of the paradoxes of the poem's depiction of despair is that it contains both terror and monotony: terror at the strangeness of these proceedings, monotony from its repetitiveness (e.g. "beating - beating"). The rhyme between "Drum" and "numb," the poem's first full rhyme, embodies this paradox. The "Drum" represents the almost threatening quality of the funeral, which then gets transformed into a numbness to that very threat. All.

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”. Line 9 Line 9 both addresses one of the poem's central mysteries and seems to gloss right over it. This is the mystery of who or what exactly this funeral is for. But readers don't get an answer. The closest glimpse comes as "a Box," likely a coffin, which never gets opened and never appears again in the poem. In this way, the coffin can be thought in terms of what filmmakers call a MacGuffin. Although the death of whatever lies in the coffin has supposedly caused this funeral in the brain, it otherwise seems to elude description. Particularly, the use of the word "Box" emphasizes the coffin's role as a container while simultaneously expanding the possibility of what the box might contain. One way to interpret this box, especially with regard to the theme of madness, is that it contains the speaker's reason or sanity. All the proceedings thus far have signaled a loss of control on the part of the speaker. It's as if these strange "Mourners" have taken over her mind. Readers might think of line 9 as the laying to rest of the speaker's sane self. Or, considering the atmosphere of despair, readers could think of the box as containing happiness, without which the speaker becomes numb. All. But readers can just as well not ascribe a single meaning to the contents of the box. Instead, it's possible to think of the inaccessibility of the box as a symbol for the larger inaccessibility of the speaker's mind. The suggestiveness and mystery of the box in this way become irreducible, the box symbolizing an absence of meaning within the speaker. The box, then, could just as well be empty. The action of this line, the lifting of the box, also emphasizes the poem's sense of physical space. Furthermore, continuing to emphasize the speaker's distance from the proceedings of the funeral, the lifting is "heard" rather than seen. This makes readers feel like they're inhabiting the speaker's mind-space, yet only able to half-glimpse what's actually going on.

Use of imagery./Writting. Se espera una información específica acerca de las imágenes visuales y auditivas de Dickinson, resaltando la frecuente conexión entre el sonido y el color. Sus imágenes no son ambiguas, sino muy claras, muy precisas, muy nítidas. Aparte de las tumbas de alabastro, en las lecturas obligatorias encontramos otras imágenes relacionadas con la muerte (el funeral, la mosca), muchas derivadas de la naturaleza (el pájaro que bebe el néctar, el volcán) y algunas inesperadas (el borracho apoyado en la farola). All. the innovative nature of Dickinson’s and Whitman’s poetry lies largely in the display of unconventional imagery that breaks with previous tradition: Dickinson’s imaginative boldness and variety (e.g. associating the moment of death with “a fly buzz”, or a state of depression with “a funeral in the brain”); on the other hand, Whitman’s catalogs of images, or his depiction of American scenes. The imagery is mainly visual. Colours and forms are named throughout the poem. The visual effects are mixed with references to the sense of taste (“I taste a liquor”, “I shall but drink”). All these things contribute to evoke with vividness the shiny summer days, and the allusions to inebriation convey the sense of numbness provoked by the summer temperature and smells. Regarding to capitalization, it was argued that maybe it corresponded to an old- fashioned type of writing in which nouns were written with a capital letter, but it is not the case, for there are many nouns in Dikinson’s poems without that capitalization. Perhaps their function is to emphasize certain words, or cause a visual effect on the reader. Regarding to punctuation, it was unorthodox. Dickinson introduced dashes throughout her poems, but the true reason to this is unknown. It has been told that they transmit a sense of pause, giving the poems an original cadence when reading them.

Dickinson. Emily Dickinson: was a lonely woman who wrote poetry to express her inner feelings. Although she lived both, in seclusion and in mourning, her poetry was very passionate. Her poetry is remarkable for its emotional and intellectual energy. She focused on topics such as nature, love, immortality, death, faith, doubt, pain and the self. Her writings allowed her to explore her own world of emotions and feelings. Death influenced her writing and became a recurrent theme in her poetry. Her fixation on death is an essential part of her religious beliefs, in I heard a Fly buzz – when I died Dickinson tries to explain what happens at the boundary of death. her poetry has an undeniable capacity to move and provoke because of her innovative views and unorthodox beliefs. Dickinson always retained an independent view towards the matter of religion. In many of her poems, she seems to question God’s existence. Her poetry bears a continuing strain of doubt and became an expression of her spirituality. aaa.

My life had stood – a Loaded Gun,. In My life had stood – a Loaded Gun, the fact that the speaker sees herself as a loaded gun, a lethal weapon, is understood as the poet´s rejection of conventional femininity because she would be presenting herself as everything that a woman is not supposed to be. Feminist critics have been particularly interested in the volcanic image of line 11, because they associate it with that of the female writer, whose linguistic expression erupts out of silence, disrupting the social structures of the male organization. aa.

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”. Lines 10-12 This stanza continues to focus on the speaker's hearing. The funeral procession crosses the speaker's "Soul." The poem has already suggested the speaker's mind has something like a floor that the mourners are walking on. Here, rather than repeat "Mind" or "Brain," the speaker switches it up with "Soul." In the first stanza the word "Brain" emphasized the physicality of the poem's events, signaling that this metaphorical funeral was going to take on very real dimensions. But by line 10, the poem has become fully immersed in those dimensions. Yet now Dickinson does the opposite: she takes a concrete word like "creak" and lends it an abstract dimension with "Soul.". What does it mean for the speaker's soul to creak? Well, think of how a creaking floorboard sounds—almost whining or mournful. And think of why they creak, how wood warps over time and the floor no longer fits together as neatly as it once did. Think also of what happens when you step on a creaky floorboard for the first time. You're surprised, even startled. Now imagine how you'd feel if you suddenly discovered your own soul could creak! Perhaps there'd be a combination of sadness and surprise, the sudden realization that your mind is maybe starting to fall apart a little bit. Part of what this implies is that people's souls are both part of and separate from them, just as your hands are part of you, but you're also more than your hands. This line can almost be felt in the body, as if the soul is a tender limb stomped on by the "Boots of Lead," whose leadenness receives further emphasis from capitalization. This detail once again retroactively qualifies what's been happening in the poem; all this time the mourners have been wearing lead boots!. Then, suddenly, the poem makes a dramatic shift. The world of the poem, up till now contained within the speaker's "Brain," suddenly opens up. Now, "Space" suddenly rings out like a bell. This is not just outer space, but space itself—that is, everywhere, the physical extent of the universe. The poem has ballooned in scale. It accomplishes this transition partly by continuing to focus on sound. The soul's creaking and the boots' stomping now become space's tolling. This final sound also increases the volume; a bell's tolling is much louder than a floorboard's creaking. This tolling completes the funeral by acting as a funeral toll, the ringing of a church bell during a funeral or burial service. All.

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”. Line 13-the first three stanzas—up to this point—explored the terror of losing inner control, now the poem transitions to an exploration of terror at the sheer immensity of the world itself. Perhaps this represents a moment of increasing madness, in which the speaker's inner turmoil bleeds into the world around. On the other hand, perhaps the speaker has reached a startlingly mystical perception of the world; perhaps something larger than the speaker is at work. At the end of the third stanza, all the space surrounding the speaker seemed to ring out with the same intensity. At the beginning of the next stanza, the speaker proposes a source for the ringing: "the Heavens." Perhaps, the speaker is suggesting, the whole sky has become like a bell. Perhaps the sound has even leaked from the Christian Heaven itself. There's still not a clear source. Nor, on such a vast scale, does the speaker perceive any explanation for why this ringing has happened. Who has struck the world like a bell? The speaker doesn't, and perhaps can't, know. The line between madness and heightened perception is a recurring theme in Dickinson. For instance, in her poem "Much Madness is divinest Sense," in which she suggests that sanity is a matter of agreeing with the majority, and that those we call "mad" often have the truest perceptions of reality. While this poem doesn't explicitly make that same argument, readers have to reckon with it in some way. Are readers to take what follows as a further descent into madness, or as a series of acute observations about the nature of existence? This challenge to the reader is part of what makes a poem like this worth reading over and over—it continually asks you where you stand, even forces you into an uncomfortable zone where what you might regard as "crazy" is actually a carefully detailed form of knowledge. All.

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”. Line 14 One of the amazing qualities of Dickinsons' writing is her compression. She can write a three-beat line that warrants a full entry here. The poem has suddenly expanded to take in the world around the speaker in addition to the inner events of her mind. Rather than focusing single-mindedly on the funeral, the speaker now has leeway to comment on the state of her existence more generally."Being" here refers to existence, more specifically a property that all things that exist have. Defining the concept of being is a problem that has occupied Western philosophers and theologians for centuries. Particularly, how do we define human "being" in relation to the world around us? The American Romantics, Dickinson's closest literary precursors, emphasized human openness to the natural world. Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose poetry Dickinson had read, famously declared himself "a transparent eyeball," meaning he was open to all perceptions the universe had to offer. Here, Dickinson replaces Emerson's eyeball with "but an Ear." Whereas in Emerson's writing openness leads to a liberating communion with the world, this particular poem of Dickinson's depicts a more pessimistic situation. Emerson emphasizes sight, but in this poem sight has been continually thwarted, replaced by hearing, which receives imprecise clues as to what's going on. We are only ears. The sky tolls, but we can't tell why. A funeral service happens, but we can only make out an incoherent beating. In short, to be an ear is to be reduced and trapped, rather than liberated. This is reflected in the quick alliteration of "Being" and "but," that latter conjunction immediately cutting existence itself down to size. All. The traditional medium of poetry is sound. The poet's ability to hear intimately relates to her ability to make poems. And despite the incoherence of what the speaker hears in his or her own experience (the treading, beating, tolling, etc.), the speaker has then transformed those sounds into coherent, evocative language. That isn't to say the speaker rationalizes or explains what's happening, but rather that the speaker is able to use language to capture the experience of non-language sounds. Seen in this light, being like an ear is exactly the thing that enables poetry to exist in the first place. Ears straddle the boundary between sense and non-sense, taking in not only a bell's toll, but also the meaning of the word "toll" itself.

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”. Lines 15-16 Lines 15 and 16 pivot out of the startling perception of line 14. If line 14 proposed a definition for what it means to exist in the world, these next two lines detail exactly what kind of human being the speaker is. In fact, these lines seem to suggest that thinking in terms of "human beings" doesn't really make sense anymore. Rather, the speaker proposes the idea "some strange Race." "Race" here means something like species, or the use of "Race" in sci-fi and fantasy—a type of creature, be it human, elf, angel, bird, etc. The speaker has become this "strange Race." The preceding events of the poem have led to a point where the speaker can no longer think of him/herself as being human. This transformation has a distinctly negative overtone in the word "Wrecked," as if the speaker has been reduced to this state. So again, readers can interpret this as a moment of the increasingly negative effects of madness, which prevent the speaker from being the person he or she once was. Alternatively, readers could see this as a kind of scraping away of the speaker to reveal exactly who she is. The Romantics, for instance, emphasized solitude as integral to self-knowledge and connection to the world around one. Going even further back in time, think of Robinson Crusoe, whose shipwreck (faintly suggested by the poem's use of the word "Wrecked") ultimately leads to a discovery of his own ingenuity. And there's of course Dickinson's own biography, her famous characterization as a recluse—whether or not such a characterization is strictly accurate—which undoubtedly gets played up in some of her own poems. The poem "I'm Nobody! Who are you?" for instance, valorizes the solitude of eccentricity over public acceptance. All. Reading "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" in such a manner, readers can see the isolated speaker discovering him/herself to be something other than human. This something is like an "ear," incredibly responsive to the "sound" of the world around it. There are two ways to read "Silence" in line 15. ---It's actually silence itself that is the "strange Race." In this case, silence becomes the speaker's companion in this wreck. ---Silence lies within the speaker and together they form this race, a strange amalgam or unity, like a hermit crab and its shell, or lichen on a tree. Either way, silence seems to have something to do with both listening and numbness. The speaker's inner silence enables the speaker to hear the tolling of space and the heavens, but it results from the "beating - beating -" that prevents the speaker from having any thoughts of his or her own. Ultimately, the speaker's new sense of his or her state of being leads the speaker to a feeling of isolation. The speaker is emphatically "here," trapped within her mind and body.

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”. Lines 17-18 The final stanza merges what readers might call the poem's two "settings" thus far: the inner world of the mind and the outer world of, well, everything else. The first line of the stanza returns readers to the mind's floorboards, which so dominated the beginning of the poem. Finally, they go from creaking (in line 10) to actually breaking. Now, however, the speaker explicitly identifies the floorboards with "Reason," rather than the "Soul." It becomes clear to the speaker that all this time it has been reason that has held the speaker's mind together. In other words, the poem suggests that rationality and the ability to find order in the world also enables us to maintain order in our own minds. The breaking of this plank gets caused by the "Boots of Lead" which have been threatening to break it all along. But due to the presence of the intervening stanzas, this break also seems to be caused in some way by the "wreckage" the speaker experiences in stanza four. All the challenges present thus far in the poem—the speaker's inner threat of madness as well as the threatening "toll" of the universe—come together to finally snap the speaker's mind. As the floor of the mind breaks, the speaker falls through it. A subtle shift happens that enables this image to work. The speaker goes from paying attention to what's happening in his or her mind to actually being inside it: the speaker is standing on the floor of his or her own mind when it breaks. The previous stanzas have already helped to shrink the speaker in contrast to the immensity of the universe (recall, for instance, how the speaker becomes "but an Ear" in line 14), so in a way readers are prepared for the speaker to be shrunk even further. In this way, the speaker becomes a miniature inhabitant of the speaker's own mind. As will soon become apparent, this floor breakage seems to collapse the division between the mind and the world. So as the speaker falls "down, and down," the speaker not only falls deeper into his or her own mind, but also deeper into the universe itself (what exactly this means gets explored in the poem's final two lines). This "down, and down" also acts as a last instance of diacope, which has been the poem's central technique for emphasizing the destruction of the speaker's mind through repetition. All.

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”. Lines 19-20 Line 19 contains one of the most striking images of the poem. As the speaker falls, he or she collides with entire worlds. Part of what's striking about this image is that it's both unprecedented and inexplicable—unprecedented in that up to now the poem has given no clues that there might be other worlds. Of course, the mysterious mourners and tolling Heavens have suggested entities that lie beyond the speaker's knowledge or control. Until now, however, it's been possible to say the World, the Heavens. Now, there's a whole multitude of Worlds and Heavens. It might be too much to say that the poem predicts modern concepts of the multiverse, but something of the notion is present here. We can't say exactly what these worlds are, but they suggest monumental entities. This moment amounts to a sudden exposure to the unbridled expanse of the universe, or whatever it is people inhabit, that has remained hidden until now. That reason's breaking unveils this expanse suggests that reason has some role in keeping it hidden. When the speaker confronts the full, multi-world extent of the universe, the speaker is "Finished knowing." The only verb in the poem to receive capitalization, this "Finished" marks a decisive moment. The speaker is unable to grasp these worlds, only to collide with them without attaining any knowledge. So, the final full-force exposure to the universe marks the end not only of reason, but of knowledge itself. The poem ends by cutting itself off. The speaker says "then -" but doesn't follow it up. It's as if whatever happens to the speaker next cannot be put into words. This final, unspeakable stage could be thought of as death, or total madness, or an ultimate understanding of the universe that is too deep for words. It's a paradoxical note to end on, but one that also contains all the poem's main themes. The dash at the end of the poem acts as a final openness. Whereas some of the previous stanzas ended on a dash, allowing a moment of silence before the beginning of the next stanza, now the poem enters a permanent silence. In this way, the silence that follows the poem gets incorporated into the poem. So, the poem doesn't really end, "then -": it ends, "then [silence].". All.

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”-Symbols-. In general, mourners symbolize sadness and loss. In this particular poem, however, they also take on an air of secrecy and mystery. They represent the parts of the speaker's mind that the speaker doesn't have access to. They're almost foreign to the speaker's mind, in fact, sudden apparitions that come to disturb the speaker's peace. Their pacing in "Boots of Lead" symbolize how intrusive, repetitive thoughts can bring one to madness and/or a state of numbness, of not being able to think of anything but those thoughts. The mourners do three things: they pace, they sit for the funeral service, and they lift the coffin (the "Box") for the funeral procession. If the funeral acts as a conceit for the death of something (reason, happiness, the self) within the speaker, then the mourners represent the mysterious forces that cause or aid that death. The mourners also serve as a juxtaposition with the poem's later emphasis on isolation. That is, whereas the speaker comes to see him- or herself as alone in the universe, the presence of the mourners in the earlier stanzas suggests that the speaker contains a multitude within his or her own. Box The box, or coffin, lies at the center of the funeral, yet its contents remain unknown. As such, it symbolizes the speaker's inability to understand what's happening inside him- or herself. Even if readers do posit that the box contains, say, the speaker's reason, or the speaker's happiness, or the self, it matters that readers can't actually see that content; instead, readers have to guess at it. Reason thus remains obscured, hidden. What's more, the box lies at the center of the funeral yet it only appears in one line of the poem. It directs the whole course of the poem while barely making an appearance. For that reason, it's possible to think of the box as what filmmakers call a MacGuffin. In literary theory, some writers might call the contents of the box an "absent center." That is, the death of whatever lies in the box has caused all these strange events to happen, yet it itself is almost a non-entity. It even drives readers to speculate as to what it is. Thought of in this way, that speculation becomes an intended effect of the poem, rather than a negative side effect. You could argue that it doesn't really matter what's inside the box, in other words, because the specific content isn't the point. What matters is how the box itself reflects the speaker's isolating sense of confusion and, perhaps doomed, search for reason and meaning. All.

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”-Conceit. Conceit The most central device of "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" is its conceit, which occurs throughout the entire poem. The speaker compares his or her state of mind to a funeral. Right off the bat, this signals an inner sadness in the speaker, a sense of mourning. Additionally, because funerals involve multiple stages, this comparison gives the speaker room to flesh out this conceit as the poem progresses. Particularly, the poem situates this funeral in the "Brain." This signals that the poem, on one hand, operates in an imaginary space. On the other hand, it locates that space directly within the head of this particular speaker. As the funeral proceedings go on, it's always clear that this is happening inside a particular person. The stages of the funeral can be thought of as follows: Stanza 1: The Wake Stanza 2: The Funeral Service Stanza 3: The Funeral Procession Stanzas 3 and 4: The Funeral Toll Stanza 5: The Burial. If funerals help the dead move on from this world to the next, then the poem's final stanzas accomplish a similar action. The speaker's falling in the last lines becomes a kind of burial. By the end of this burial, the speaker has effectively disappeared from the world. So, what exactly is this a funeral for? Following the theme of madness, we could say it's the death of reason. With regard to the theme of despair, it's the death of happiness or of a sense of self. Or perhaps it represents obliteration in the face of the universe's unknowability. However you choose to interpret it, some part of the mind has died. All.

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”-Conceit cont. Conceit Furthermore, the funeral really depicts two ends. The first, we've already addressed: something has died in the speaker. That has already happened at the start of the poem. The second end is the end of the funeral, the actual putting to rest. This comes in the poem's final stanza, the explicit silencing of the speaker in the unfinished phrase "- then -." If funerals, in part, serve to guide the soul of the deceased into the next world, that's exactly what happens in this poem as well. The speaker's mind gets transported beyond the known world. And that's ultimately what the poem leaves readers with: a kind of transport, albeit an unhopeful one. The conceit also acts as a transport in another sense: it becomes literal. Throughout the poem, the line between the metaphor's vehicle and tenor (that is, the line between the thing evoked for the sake of comparison, the funeral, and the subject being described, the speaker's state of mind) gets blurred; the metaphor seems to become real. Readers are so inside the speaker's inside, and the details of the funeral get so fleshed-out, that they might start taking the funeral seriously. Readers lose track of what certain aspects of the funeral might represent (who are the mourners? what is the service? what's in the box?). Instead, these elements become mysterious entities with lives of their own. All. In the hands of a poet with less control, some readers might see this as messiness. Here, though, the poem achieves such evocative images and insights that this confusion seems worth it. Indeed, instead of confusion we might think of this as a kind of fusion, a wedding of vehicle and tenor that exemplifies the power of language and metaphor to transport readers beyond mundane comparisons into a realm of greater insight.

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”-Metaphor. Metaphor The poem's use of individual metaphors weaves in and out of its use of conceit, and basically consists of the entire poem. For instance, when the speaker's soul creaks in line 10, the poem is metaphorically comparing the soul with a warped wooden floor. That comparison helps provide further detail for the funeral procession, which is part of the poem's central conceit, though the floorboards themselves are not necessarily integral to funeral metaphor. In other words, from the guiding comparison of the speaker's state of mind to a funeral, all these other comparisons spring forth that help flesh out the speaker's world and provide idiosyncratic insights to the speaker's mindset. Basically everything that happens in the poem is a metaphor. Yet, paradoxically, it's also all literal. Very quickly we realize that what we took to be a conceit (the comparison of the mind to a funeral) the speaker takes literally. Part of the reason for this is that the things the metaphors represent are pretty indistinct. Whereas a standard metaphor compares two nameable things (e.g. the sea is a blanket), in this poem we can't always name the subject of the metaphor. For instance, in lines 16 and 17, the speaker says "And then a Plank in Reason, broke / And I dropped down, and down." On a basic level, this line compares reason to floorboards. When those boards break, the speaker falls through them into a state beyond reason. On this level, the line's metaphorical function is clear. Yet on the other hand, what exactly does it mean for reason to break? What do those planks actually represent? What does it mean, more deeply, for the speaker to think of reason as a set of floorboards? There's a certain unspeakable quality at the bottom of these metaphors: they represent structures of the mind, or of experience, or of the world, that readers can intuit but not necessarily name. It's as if these things can only be spoken about metaphorically. These complicated, layered metaphors thus reflect the speaker's own sense of confusion and isolation from the speaker's own mind (or "Soul" or "reason"). All.

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”. Anaphora Anaphora serves as a unifying device throughout the poem. The word "And" repeatedly begins lines to an increasing degree, until completely filling the fifth stanza. Since Dickinson uses dashes in place of periods, it's not necessarily possible to say where one sentence ends and another begins. In fact, we could interpret the poem as one long sentence. The word "And" allows this to happen, compounding the sentence. It acts as a coordinating conjunction that could essentially allow the poem to go on forever. As more and more surprising things happen, the anaphora of "And" helps cohere the poem. Anaphora also provides a rhetorical gesture that guides the speaker through the poem. The speaker basically keeps saying, "And then this happened! And then this!" Related to the use of epizeuxis, this repetition of anaphora helps readers sense the speaker's fatigue. One inexplicable occurrence after another keeps happening within the speaker's mind. Relatedly, "And" captures the procedural nature of these occurrences. Funerals, after all, are rituals with pre-determined events. There's a wake, and then there's a service, and then there's a procession, and then there's the tolling of a bell, and then there's the burial. In this way, the use of a conceit itself is intimately related to the use of anaphora. All.

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”. Repetition The poem employs a complex use of repetition, using a variety of words that all essentially refer to things happening in and to the speaker's "Brain": "Sense," "mind," "Soul," "Being," and "Reason." On a first gloss, all these words roughly refer to the speaker's consciousness. They help keep the speaker from saying the word "mind" six times in five stanzas. Yet each word also has its own definition. None of them really do mean the same thing, or have the same connotations. The subtle differences of the words capture the broader nature of the "mind." Another way of thinking about it is the idea of slippage: by purposefully varying word choice, the speaker causes one idea to slip into another. Similarly, "Brain," "mind," "Soul," and "Being" all refer to the experience of having a consciousness. By appearing throughout the poem, they keep readers aware that these events occur inside or in relation to the speaker's mind. Yet each one's usage implies that something slightly different is up for grabs. "Brain" emphasizes the physicality and inside-ness of the poem. "Mind" suggests the full range of faculties, including reason, that are at stake here, while "Soul" lends a theological tone to these faculties. And "Being" seems to strip away these faculties to some primal quality of simply existing. All.

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”. Stream of Consciousness Stream of consciousness historically refers to a style that was developed after Dickinson's death, most famously by writers like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. Dickinson wouldn't have known the term, since it was coined by the philosopher and psychologist William James in 1890. Still, the term helps readers make sense of Dickinson's style and distinct flow of thought, especially since Dickinson's work can be thought of as a precursor to modernism, the literary movement that stream of consciousness is associated with. Rather than having a pre-meditated set of ideas or direction of thought the speaker wants to go in, the speaker discovers these things as she goes along. This quality makes the poem unpredictable. Just as the speaker has lost control of his or her mind, the poem itself follows a path beyond the control of the speaker. All. “I felt a Funeral in my Brain”Brain”(cont - The extended metaphor of the funeral illustrates a mental process that is characterized by monotony and repetitiveness conveyed by the sense of hearing - The spatial setting of the poem which is suggested by the claustrophobic environment of the funeral is also important In this gloomy atmosphere, the mind becomes numb.

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” Form/Meter. “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” employs a ballad stanza, with five quatrains following an ABCB rhyme scheme. Dickinson often employs this form. It provides a ready-made structure that provides some order to her imaginative improvisations. Here, even though the poem depicts a disordering of the speaker’s mind, the process by which this happens has a kind of order to it, mimicked by the poem’s formal order. Each stanza represents a distinct step along the way, corresponding to each stage in the metaphorical funeral: The Wake The Service The Procession The Funeral Toll The Burial. The ballad stanza has a long history in English literature. Most prominently, it's often used in narrative poems. Dickinson doesn't always tell a story in her poems, but here she does. The stages of the funeral become events in the story that's taking place within the speaker's mind. In fact, readers might think of both poems and funerals as ritualized stories. All. The poem follows the common meter, which is usually associated with the ballad. Common meter alternates lines of iambic tetrameter (the first and third lines) with lines of iambic trimeter (the second and fourth).The poem follows the traditional rhyme scheme of a ballad stanza: ABCB. The second and fourth lines rhyme, while the first and third don't. Some of these are slant rhymes=Traditionally, slant rhyme referred to a type of rhyme in which two words located at the end of a line of poetry themselves end in similar—but not identical—consonant sounds.

"I heard a Fly buzz -- when I died". Composed in 1863 It focuses on the experience of death by capturing the last thoughts of the speaker surrounded by mourners, but much more attentive to the presence of a buzzing fly that blocks out the light. In I Heard a Fly buzz – when I died, the imagery emphasizes the connection of the senses of hearing and sight by linking sound and colour. The final ebb of consciousness is depicted as a loss of sight, which marks the ending of the poem. It concludes when vision fails, the unequivocal sign that the speaker is addressing readers not during the process of dying, but after death. The poem focuses on the experience of death by capturing the last thoughts of the speaker, surrounded by mourners, but much more attentive to the presence of a buzzing fly that blocks out the light. The poem was composed in the summer of 1863 and posthumously published in 1896 under the title of "Dying" with several alterations.Dickinson’s imaginative boldness and variety (e.g. associating the moment of death with “a fly buzz. The imagery emphasizes the connection of the senses of hearing and sight by linking sound and colour The end of consciousness is depicted as a loss of sight, which marks the ending of the poem.Death influenced her writing and became a recurrent theme in her poetry. Her fixation on death is an essential part of her religious beliefs, in I heard a Fly buzz – when I died Dickinson tries to explain what happens at the boundary of death. It concludes when vision fails the unequivocal sign that the speaker has just died As it is written in the past tense, it is assumed that the speaker is addressing readers after death.In “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died” she unconventionally relates the moment of death with the image and sound of a blue fly that crosses the room. The speaker is addressing readers not during the process of dying, but after death. All.

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -” Summary-Themes. I could hear a fly buzzing around the room at the moment I died. The room felt very still, like the calm, tense air in between the gusts of a storm. The people gathered around me had cried until they had no tears left, and everyone seemed like they were holding their breath, waiting for my final moment and anticipating the arrival of God in the room. I had signed a will that gave away all my possessions, dividing up all the parts of my life that could be divided up. And then, suddenly, a fly interrupted the proceedings. The fly looked blue and buzzed around the room erratically. It flew in front of the light, blocking it. Then the light from the windows faded away, and I could not see anything at all. The Mystery of Death “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died” attempts to imagine the transition between life and death. While the poem does have questions about whether there is an afterlife, it conveys its uncertainty by focusing on the actual moment of death itself. Told from the perspective of someone who seems to have already died, the poem is mysterious and paradoxical—obviously, no one has yet been able to describe what it feels like to actually die! Dickinson tries to imagine it anyway—and her take is decidedly less sentimental than most, as the speaker’s final moments are interrupted by a buzzing fly. Perhaps this suggests the sheer mundanity of mortality—there is nothing so ordinary as a bug—or that no matter how well one prepares to face the other side, it’s impossible to be ready for something unknowable. Ritual and Meaning Describing the speaker’s dying moments, “I heard a Fly buzz - when I died” presents a scene of ritual and ceremony. In essence, the speaker is going through the motions of what people are supposed to do when they die, and the people around the dying speaker are playing their part in this ritual too—gathering solemnly around the speaker’s death bed, crying, and dealing with the will. These last few moments are a revealing commentary on the way people conceive of life itself—but the presence of the fly casts doubts on the priorities and beliefs of human existence. The deathbed scene the speaker describes is like a miniature of humankind’s long-established traditions and customs around death. Religion, family, and the law are all represented here. The Mystery of Death Everything is set up, then, for this to be a kind of picture-perfect death—the mourners are in place and the event is unfolding according to traditions and customs of the time. But it’s then—and explicitly “then” in line 11—that the fly comes into view and earshot. It disturbs this perfect scene in a way that seems ironic, tragically comic, and incredibly well-timed.Flies are often associated with the decay of the human body. Over time, the physical features that made the speaker recognizable will waste away, leaving only bones. This is a stark reminder of the physical reality of death and seems to undermine what usually gives life meaning, whether that be possessions, beliefs, or interpersonal relationships. All.

I heard a fly buzz. The poem is dealing in symbolism here, associating "light" with life and contrasting it with the dark unknowability of death. This image also suggests the closing of the speaker's eyes, the speaker's field of vision narrowing as he or she takes the mysterious step from being into non-being. The power of the fly's interruption lies precisely in its ambiguity. There are a number of ways to read this moment. A fly is a scavenger, often found on decomposing flesh (whether animal or plant). It has a long-standing association with death because it often appears at the site of death shortly thereafter. With this in mind, then, the fly serves as a stark reminder that the speaker's body will rot away and leave a pile of bones. If this first interpretation is relatively literal—indeed, literally down-to-earth—then the fly can also be interpreted more figuratively: perhaps the fly is the emissary of death, arriving to take the speaker on a spiritual journey. Some critics even interpret the fly as the grim reaper. A third interpretation is that the fly ultimately doesn't represent anything—and that's the point. Its insignificance serves as a comically timed reminder that life is ultimately meaningless—that no amount of "Keepsakes," loved ones, or religion can change that. All.

“Safe in their Alabaster Chambers”. Written in 1859 (first version) - Two versions of the poem 1859 and 1861 versions included in the text book - Main themes death, Christianity. Form lyric poem occasional end rhymes, mixture of metre alliteration, assonance, sibilance, inverted word order (“safe in their alabaster chambers”) - Literary figures metaphors ( sleep), anaphora ( metonymy ( personification (laughs the breeze), imagery ( religion, death), irony. All.

“My life had stood a Loaded Gun”. First published 1929 - One of Emily Dickinson's most popular and most often discussed poems. The poem's central metaphor of a loaded gun to describe the speaker's life suggests rage as does the reference to Mount Vesuvius, the volcano whose eruption in the year 79 famously wiped out Pompeii.- A poem with multiple interpretations. It exemplifies her technique of the “omitted centre” she omits information that is crucial to the understanding of the poem Such omissions or absences may either cause frustration or be taken as deliberate signs to indicate the gaps that poetry is supposed to illustrate. The fact that the speaker sees herself as a loaded gun, a lethal weapon is understood as the poet’s rejection of conventional femininity because shewould be presenting herself as everything that a woman is not supposed to be. Feminist critics have been particularly interested in the volcanic image of line 11 because they associate it with that of the female writer, whose linguistic expression erupts out of silence, disrupting the social structures of the male organization. All.

“My life had stood a Loaded Gun”. Freudian analyses of the poem point to hypothetical aggressions and frustrations There is indeed a great deal of violence in it. This is probably one of the most often discussed of all Dickinson's poems,perhaps because it does not lend itself to a single interpretation. It exemplifies her technique of the "omitted centre," a device by which the author alludes to what seems specific, but in fact does not identify the people involved or locate the events evoked. Instead, she omits information that is crucial to the understanding of the poem. Such omissions or absences may either cause frustration or be taken as deliberate signs to indicate the gaps that poetry is purported to illustrate. According to the feminist poet and literary critic Adrienne Rich, "it is a poem about possession by the daemon, about the dangers and risks of such possession if you are a woman, about the knowledge that power in a woman can seem destructive, and that you cannot live without the daemon once it has possessed you." She considered this a "central poem in understanding Emily Dickinson, and ourselves, and the condition of the woman artist, particularly in the nineteenth century.". many feminist interpretations that basically emphasize how female creation is perceived as a form of aggression. The fact that the speaker sees herself as a loaded gun, a lethal weapon, is understood as the poet's rejection of conventional femininity because she would be presenting herself as everything that a woman is not supposed to be. All.

Emily Dickinson. Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886) was an American poet whose work became known only posthumously. Her poetry is recognized today for its non-standard form and often unusual syntax. it is necessary to sift through the clues she leaves in her words in order to decipher the hidden meaning. Her seemingly random capitalization, lack of punctuation or obsession with dashes, and incorrect use of grammar were all done deliberately, sometimes to highlight the message that would have otherwise gone unheeded. One such poem which has multiple meanings is “My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun—.” To the average reader, Emily Dickinson’s “My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun—” personifies a gun, but several metaphorical clues lead to a second meaning and message: a woman and her words have great power. Throughout her work, one can see that Dickinson does not seem to care about what is socially accepted. She does not shy away from subjects like religion and/or heaven and hell, which could be considered the most controversial of the time and which other authors and poets (and women in particular) may have avoided for that reason. All.

“My life had stood a Loaded Gun”. On the other hand, if one looks deeper into these lines, a connection can be made to a woman and her words. The “My Life” becomes a woman’s life, while the “Loaded Gun” indicates the potential power and danger that a woman has. All four words are capitalized, and though “Loaded” has one more syllable, in the line they almost become parallel or equivalent to each other. The woman has stood “In Corners” until her “Owner,” or husband, “identified” or chose her and “carried” her away (2-4). Dickinson is saying that women are powerful, but are the tools of men and often have no choice other than to wait for marriage. The “We roam in Sovreign Woods—” refers to the husband and wife being in man’s world (5). The “We hunt the Doe—” was carefully worded by Dickinson (6). “Doe” could as easily have been replaced with “deer” or “buck,” but it was the female of the species that was chosen (6). This line means that females are killed in the world of men, or the power of the female is killed. The men cannot allow the females to get too powerful. When the female does “speak for Him,” “The Mountains straight reply—” (7-8). Dickinson is saying that when a woman makes a decision that is normally a man’s or ventures to write something (venturing into the territory men believe belongs to them), she gets nowhere. One could read these lines as either the woman’s way is blocked by a wall (“Mountains”), or that she is instantly met with criticism (“straight reply”) (8). the third stanza. The “smile” and “light” that “Upon the Valley glow—” indicate the gun’s spark and flash as it goes off (9-10). “It is as a Vesuvian face/ Had let it’s pleasure through” compares the spark and flash to a sudden and violent outburst like Vesuvius erupting (11-12). The meaning of the stanza changes if the persona is a woman. The “smile” and “cordial light” could be the polite mask a woman must wear in a man’s world, or even the lovely appearance of her poetry (9). The “Vesuvian face” letting “its pleasure through-” however, may be a reference to a woman exploding through writing and letting her words through (11-12). A vesuvian was also known as a slow burning match that was used to light cigars, and Dickinson could have meant to indicate that the power of a woman’s words, once released, do not easily fade (“vesuvian”). All.

“My life had stood a Loaded Gun”. The alternate meaning shows that the woman’s husband is also her “Master” (14). “’Tis better than the Eider Duck’s/ Deep Pillow—to have shared—,” means the woman is turning away from the softness of feminine life, and perhaps even from sharing a bed with her husband (15-16).REJECTION OF CONVENTIONAL FEMINITY. She’s deadly due to the power her words carry, and once used as a weapon.The “Yellow Eye” could refer to a ‘jaundiced eye,’ where something is looked at with a negative or critical view (19). The “emphatic Thumb” could mean making a decision about something (thumbs up or thumbs down) and expressing view forcibly (20). Together the “Yellow Eye” and “emphatic Thumb,” or the woman’s critical words about something, are unstoppable. she has “the power to kill,/ Without—the power to die—,” meaning that her words and poetry have the power to kill (or fight or argue) and cannot end or be taken back once she puts them out there; therefore because her words will be immortal, it is necessary for men to live longer than she physically has, so that her words will continuously be around them. Dickinson did not have any problem tackling tough topics like heaven, hell, or religion, and so poems did not contain hidden meanings because she was afraid of criticism. Rather, it was likely due to Dickinson simply enjoying the experience of layering meanings on top of each other. Her poems can be likened to archeological digs. On the surface there is one layer, but dig a little deeper and another layer is found. In the case of “My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun—,” the surface meaning is about a personified gun, but delve a little deeper into the text and Dickinson’s views on women and poetry are, perhaps, revealed: a woman and her words are not only powerful, but in a man’s world will stand the test of time. References. All.

Images and Symbols. Dickinson also makes use of a number of images, the most important of which is the gun. No matter what one sees as the appropriate interpretation of this piece, the “gun” in question is always going to represent power. They have an inherent danger associated with them and in this case, it is used as a symbol for the speaker’s life and the power her worlds hold. Nature also plays an important role in the text. There is a hunted “Doe,” the presence of night, and a reference to Mount Vesuvius. The speaker uses repetition to describe the process of hunting, day in and day out, in the “Sovereign Woods.” It is also important to note what hunting itself represents. It is at the same time a destructive sport, a skill, and an outlet for anger. Then there is the doe to consider, it is there as the female focus of the speaker’s anger. It is important to keep in mind while reading this piece that there are a number of different interpretations associated with the text. The “Owner” and “Master” can stand-in for God, a power-wielding lover, or the speaker’s own anger. Of these many different interpretations, this analysis will focus on the husband as Owner and the hidden power of a woman’s words. all.

A loaded gun. ‘My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun’ by Emily Dickinson describes the sleeping power of a woman who is being wielded by a Master in a male-dominated world. The poem begins with the speaker stating that her life has existed up as a “Loaded Gun” in a corner. Then one day passes where a “Master” comes along and carries her away. This person is likely a man, her husband, who wields much more power in the world than she is allowed to. Now that she is at his side, more like an accessory or tool than partner, she is taken deeper into the male world. From her new position, she is made to hunt a “doe” or female deer and is pushed back when she attempts to assert her own opinion. It is clear in the next stanza that anger is building up inside the speaker. She does not give in to it though. She puts on a smiling face, as would be expected of her, and keeps her anger inside. The speaker does express though what would’ve happened if she’d allowed herself to show her true emotion. Her calm face would have become volcanic, like Vesuvius, and exploded anger over the “Valley.”. All.

My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun. The next stanza of ‘My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun’ takes the reader to the end of the day when all the man’s deeds are done and the wife has served her purpose. As she is still embodied as the gun, she is set at his head, and he goes to sleep. Although this is not the traditional way man and wife should sleep, she is fine with this arrangement. Her femininity and position as “wife” are stripped away just as an Eider Duck takes its own feathers for its bed. In the final two stanzas, the speaker describes how to her Master’s foes she is a great weapon She is deadly to any who cross him, a fact she has no control over. This state of being is combined with her own interior power she is unable to express. She has a critical eye and a trigger-happy “Thumb” she is longing to make use of for her own purposes. The last lines describe how the speaker is conflicted over the fact that she is going to outlive her “Master” (since she is an inanimate object). This is a state that does not benefit her as she needs him (as a representative of humanity) to live on to see, read, and know her words. Now that the husband, or owner, has picked up the female speaker they are together able to “roam in Sovereign Woods.” Again, this line can have multiple meanings, but likely refers to the male-dominated world she is now forced to step into. It is important to keep in mind in the second line that the speaker is said to “hunt the Doe.” A doe always refers to a female deer, an important distinction. Her participation in the world of men allows her to observe the destruction of women. All.

My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun. In the third stanza, a reader must continue to keep in mind the function of a gun, and the traditional social place of a woman. The speaker describes how she smiles and a “cordial light” glows out “Upon the Valley.” Here again, is another reference to the “Mountains” of the second stanza. She is able to step back from the assertive words of the second stanza and return to the emotionless mask men expect from women. The next lines speak on the second way of being. She chose to “smile” rather than let her “Vesuvian face” through. If she had done the latter, then her pleasure, in the form of volcanic rage would’ve poured out on a valley instead. This stanza marks another separation for the speaker from the traditional life of a wife. Rather than sharing a pillow with her husband, she is placed near his head, perhaps on the wall. The line about the “Eider Duck” refers to a type of duck that pulls out its own feathers to make a nest. It, in a way, destroys itself to bring itself more comfort. This speaks to the way that the speaker is taking away the elements that make her “wife” in order to improve her overall situation. The fifth stanza is the most violent of ‘My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun’. The speaker describes how to “foe of His” and to all others like them, she is “deadly.” She has a power that every once in awhile seeps out from the gun and knocks down anyone in its sight. Those who are in the way do not “stir the second time.” When taken into consideration with the other stanzas a reader might wonder if the speaker is eventually going to move from being a deadly foe to ”His” foes to a deadly foe to “Him.”. All.

Loaded gun. The last two lines of the stanza speak about the gun going off, triggered by the “emphatic Thumb” and seen in a burst of “Yellow” from the “Eye” or barrel. At the same time, these phrases could refer to the speaker’s own words and opinions about the world. This connects with the hidden “Vesuvian face” of the third stanza. When it comes out, it is powerful. If the last part of my analysis seems confusing and even contradictory, it is because the poem itself,as it has already been said at the beginning, is confusing and even contradictory. To sum up I wouldlike to say that, from my point of view, the important point about this poem is how Dickinson’sattempt to break up with the traditional ideas of womanhood and gender roles, since it is based uponthe traditional opposition between femininity/masculinity, passivity/activity, object/subject, provesitself in some way “futile”. One may notice that she is not defending femininity, or trying to posit ithigher or at the same level than masculinity, but what she is doing is taking a male position. This may explain why she takes her identity from a man. She is opposing the fact that being a woman entails being passive and defenseless, but at the same time she is saying that her aggressivecharacter appeared only after a man identified her. So, she is not pulling down the differences or thehierarchy existing between male and female, but interchanging the roles. Nevertheless, one shouldnot think that Dickinson’s poem is a failure – from a feminist point of view –, but on the contrary it isa success, since she manages to highlight the difficulty, or even impossibility, of writing at the sametime from and against a preestablished language and a system of thought, which are thevery bases of the discrimination of women. All.

Otra interpretación. him" as an image symbolic of certain aspects of her own personality, qualities and needs and potentialities which have been identified culturally and psychologically with the masculine, and which she consequently perceived and experienced as masculine. All.