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Essay / Emily Dickinson - My Brain and Its Interpretation of Life and Death in his brain. Over the past 124 years since its publication, this poem has been the subject of much debate about its meaning. Some believe Dickinson is writing from beyond the grave while others believe the speaker is still alive. Likewise, some believe funerals are metaphorical while others argue they are literal. Although different people may interpret different meanings of the poem, I believe that Dickinson wrote this poem from the perspective of a living person. This person is suffering from a severe migraine which serves to illustrate: “Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay. We must first understand what each line means and its context in Dickinson's perspective. The first stanza of the poem - I felt a funeral in my brain, and the mourners came and went, walked - walked - until it seemed as if the sense was breaking through and exposing the setting. In this setting, we see that the funeral is both metaphorical and literal. From an outside perspective, funerals are metaphorical because they don't actually take place. But Dickinson says, “I felt a funeral in my brain,” illustrating that for her, funerals are literal. She physically feels the funeral, so it's not a metaphor for her. She continues to describe the "grievers" walking "back and forth" in her brain, their small steps causing pain in her head. The mourners "kept walking - walking - until it seemed / the sense broke through -" which depicts the monotony of the migraine throbbing in his head. Note the repetition of the word “walk,” which conveys to the reader what a migraine feels like. The next stanza - And when they were all seated, A service, like a drum - Kept beating - beating - until I The thought of my mind going numb intensifies the feeling of pain in his head. Even after the little mourners sit down, the service continues to hit him over the head. Once again, she repeats a word (“beat” this time) to highlight the metronomic pulsing in her brain. The stanza ends with “My mind was growing numb,” indicating that she can’t take it anymore. In the next stanza - And then I heard them lift a box and grind into my soul with those same lead boots, again. ,Then Space - started to ring, the funeral timeline continues, intensifying the action. At this point the box is lifted and ready to be buried. The box "creaks in [his] soul", which illustrates how the pain has taken control of his entire body and is no longer contained in his head. She recalls the “boots of lead” that little mourners use to stomp on their brains. If "space has begun to take its toll", it means that the space around her is taking its toll on her, whether physical or mental. This shows that it's no longer just the feelings in his head that affect him, but also everything around him. The first line of the next stanza - As all the heavens were a bell, and a being, but an ear, and I, and Silence, some strange Race, Shipwrecked, solitary, here defines the sky as a bell. This makes the image of the sky omnipresent and always reaching into the sky, leaking a ring all around it. The next line defines her being as "an ear": she has no choice butto listen to the ringtone. The phrase “And I, and Silence, a strange race” has a strange grammatical pattern, but we can make sense of it. The parallel structure of “Et moi et silence” is used to equate her and silence; it is silence. In the same way, She and silence are also a “strange race”. She uses race to denote a competition, as if she is fighting against silence so that she can achieve silence and make her wholeness a silence. But her achievement is “ruined” just like her. The change in meter of this line signals a change in the poem. The final stanza -And then a plank in Reason, broke,And I fell, and down -And I collided with a world, at each dive,And I finished knowing - then changes the poem. Dickinson says that a "plank of reason breaks", demonstrating a breakdown in his sanity as the migraine takes over. The next line, “And I went down, and I went down,” is an indicator that there has been a change. She is the one falling, which means she is now imagining herself in the coffin falling through the earth. Even though she is still alive, she imagines that she died because of the extreme migraine. The phrase “And strike a world, with each dive” maintains the idea that she perhaps passes into another world, that is to say a life after death. Although it now seems convincing that she is dead, the poem ends with "And I have finished knowing - then -". This sentence structure is strange because the poem ends with a hyphen. This is a sign that she is not really dead. “So –” signals that something else should follow. She doesn't need to tell us what comes next, she only needs to indicate that this isn't really the end so we know she's still alive. Dickinson uses “I Felt A Funeral” to show someone suffering from an illness or headache. so intense that they feel like they are dead. This is clear from the text of the poem. Many descriptors in the text correspond to symptoms of migraines and other illnesses. The purpose of describing an illness with the imagery of a funeral is to demonstrate that there is death in life. Dickinson often talks about death in her poems. Throughout his work, death seems to be a recurring theme. For example, in "My Life Had Stood A Loaded Gun", she describes herself as a gun, an instrument of death, and then discusses immortality versus the power to die. In Johnson #327, she wonders if she is afraid of death, life, or resurrection. This recurring theme of death is often disturbing and enigmatic, but it is always used alongside life. Throughout her life, Dickinson was quite often very close to death or mortal feelings. During her adolescence, she was frequently ill, and in one case suffered a prolonged illness lasting a year. During her later years of writing, she became reclusive and became very depressed. It is quite possible that during her life she experienced death again and again, even as she continued to live, and that she developed a philosophy of death in life. This idea of death in life is contrasted by Herman Melville in Moby-Dick. In the novel, there are multiple examples of symbolism of rebirth or life in death. The protagonist Ishmael is almost killed, but escapes a shipwreck by riding away on another character's coffin. The symbol of the coffin, the vessel of death, now serving as the vessel of life, is a metaphor for how there is life even in death. Also, after almost all the characters have been killed, Melville mentions. the sky and the ocean. He describes the sky as feminine and the ocean as masculine, which again is a symbol.
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