"I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" Analysis

"I felt a Funeral, in my Brain"
by Emily Dickinson


I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through -

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum -
Kept beating - beating - till I thought
My mind was going numb -

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space - began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here -

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then -

In the poem "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain", Emily Dickinson depicts the experience of one's descent into insanity as the grasp on one's mind becomes looser and looser. She uses the image of a funeral service and a physical death to describe the death of the mind.  Through this connection between the loss of life and the loss of mind, Dickinson characterizes insanity as a death that, even though not physical, kills the part of a person that makes him or her human.

Dickinson begins the poem by describing the first stage insanity.  At the funeral in the person's mind, the mourners went "to and fro" and "kept treading - treading".  This back and forth and constant motion shows the last few moments of sanity as the mind tries to hold on to what is left of its grasp of reality.  The repeated, circular motion represents the confusion and disoriented state that the mourners and the person is experiencing.  This confusion continued until "Sense was breaking through".  The capitalized "Sense" is the being that is the human mind.  As "Sense" broke through the thin ice, the barrier that separates sanity and insanity, the mind begins its descent into nothingness.

The poem then focuses on the disorientation that now pervades the mind.  The drums of the service "Kept beaintg - beating - till I thought / My mind was going numb-".  These drums and their incessant  beating represent the overwhelming number of thoughts and feelings that bombards the unprotected mind.  These thoughts inevitably overwhelm the mind as overtime, it becomes "numb" to thoughts.  After the "numbness", silence settles in.  As the mind is now unable to process the world that surrounds it, it becomes disconnected from reality and is left with "Wrecked, solitary, here - "

After it loses its connection with the outside world, the mind begins to lose itself.  The "Plank in Reason" that breaks represents the start of the frail infrastructure of the mind itself crumbling down.  As reason and logic begin to crumble, the mind itself ends.  The last line of the poem states that the person "Finished knowing - then".  In this line, the word "knowing" means the most simple of mental functions, the ability to be aware and to perceive.  Without the ability to know, the person is no longer human and is now a hollow shell of what once was a thinking creature.

In this poem, Dickinson depicts the horrifying experience of losing ones mind.  As the world crumbles around and on top of consciousness,  both feelings of being overwhelmed and isolated begin to spread throughout the mind.  These feelings are then followed by a nothingness that marks the end of the human mind.

Allegory of the Cave and the Monomyth

Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" depicted a story of a man born in darkness who is allowed to ascend to light and must then venture back into the dark in order to raise his fellow men with him.  The allegory of the enlightened men and his journey follows Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey almost exactly.

In the allegory, the men are born in a dark cave and, having been there all their lives, have a skewed view of reality.  Because it is all they know, however, to them, this view is not merely a view of reality, but reality itself.  In their reality, the shadows that they see are not representations of the object but the objects themselves.  The hero of the allegory, the man that eventually escapes the darkness, is also born in the dark cave.

The man's first realization occurs when he is allowed to turn his head and see that the shadows were, like their namesake, nothing more than shadows of wooden carvings cast upon the wall by a blazing fire behind them.  In this moment, the man realizes that his entire perception of reality as well as his fellow men's entire perception of reality has been completely fabricated.  In their reality, the shadows were all there was, but his knowledge of the fire proofs to him that the shadows were a skewed perception of reality that he has accepted all of his life.  This realization is similar to the hero's realization that the hero's mundo world is a poor representaiton of the real world.  This revelation is the hero's call to action as he must now embark on  a journey to reveal the truth.

After he realized that his old reality was fake, the man ascends the steps of the cave into the outside world.  His ascends into the light, leaving the cave and his fellow prisoners.  The man leaves all that he'd ever known to explore the greater truth outside of his cave.  This ascent is the transition the hero must make from the mundane world to the supernatural world.  In this journey, the hero must travel through uncertainty and leave behind and escape his own subconciousness and ideas of truth inorder to explore the truth of the outside world.  As he comes closer to the light, he crosses the threshold between his world and the extraordinary world where all of his knowledge is proven useless.

Up on the surface, however, the man begins to truly see for the first time.  The light of the sun allows him to wholly see the world.  The man slowly captures the essence of the world that now surrounds him.  From the shadows to the reflections to the objects themselves, he grows accustomed to the upper world.  After a while, he gazes upon the sun and through his knowledge of the sun, he now understands the truths of the world.  In the allegory, the sun represents the source of knowledge and the ultimate prize that the hero is rewarded with as he completes his journey.  It is this treasure that the hero must now bring back to the mundane world to better it as a whole.

In the closing scene of the allegory, however, the man returns to the cave and is now an outcast.  Because of his vision of the light and knowledge of the world, he is not longer able to see the shadows clearly.  The prisoners, because of their limited view of reality, considers the man's enlightenment a burden and that he is now blind to their reality.  This is similar to the situation where the gold or treasure the hero brings back turns into ashes.  This means the treasure or knowledge the hero achieved is worthless in the mundane world as the people of the mundane world lack understanding.  The allegory concludes that it is the enlightened one's responsibility to, despite of the possiblity of death, help his fellow men see the light and raise them from the cave in which they are trapped.

Prufrock and Winesburg

T.S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of  J. Alfred Prufrock" and Sherwood Anderson 's novel Winesburg, Ohio share many common themes including feelings of inadequacy and inability to communicate.  Eliot communicates these ideas through the Prufrock's seemingly somber and depressed depiction of himself and his inadequacy while Anderson communicates the themes through the depiction of the grotesques.

One of the largest feelings that Prufrock repeats is the feeling of his own inadequacy in the eye society.  He talks about how "In the room the women com and go/Talking of Michelangelo" (Eliot 13).  The title of the poem suggests that Prufrock's purpose is to gain the interest of women, but in this line the women are instead paying attention to Michelangelo.  The name Michelangelo can be accredited to the famous Italian painter, sculptor, architect, and poet of the Renaissance.  One of Michelangelo's most famous artwork is the Statue of David with which Michelangelo, out of stone, depicts a man with toned, hardened muscles and alabaster skin that represents the epitome of perfection in a man.  Prufrock, on the other hand, worries about his inadequacies when he self-consciously points out "...How his hair is growing thin" (Eliot 41) and "...how his arms and legs are thin" (Eliot 44).  This feeling of inadequacy is also seen in Winesburg, Ohio among many of the grotesques when in "Sophistication", George Willard worries if he will seem childish and impotent to Helen White compared to the college professor or in "Loneliness" when Enoch tries to proof himself to the woman by lecturing her about his understanding of the world.

The debilitation effect of inability to communicate, on of the largest themes in Winesburg, Ohio is also seen in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock".  In the poem, Prufrock is unable to find a way to communicate his thoughts as he wonders "...how should I begin/To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?/And how should I presume" (Eliot 59).  We also see Prufrock's regret after he talks when he says "That is not it at all,/That is not what I meant, at all" (Eliot 109).  This inability to communicate in something as personal and revealing as a love song shows how Prufrock is disconnected from society and how meaningless his frustration and planning was.  The inability to communicate in Winesburg, Ohio appears throughout the novel with many of the grotesques.  In "Hands", Wing Biddlebaum's inability to express himself with after the incident leaves him feeling entrapped in his own body.  In "Loneliness", Enoch Robinson struggles to communicate his understanding and then eventually forcing his understanding out makes him grotesque.  Like Prufrock, the societal pressure forces Enoch to try to express himself but it is the expression that leads to regret.

Both works deal with the pressure society has on individuals through society's judgement.  The feelings of inadequacy and inability to communicate in both works show the possible stagnation of an individual under the crushing pressure of society.