Blog Entry # 3

Domenick D’Angelo                                                                                                D’Angelo 1

ENG 102

Professor Smith

"I Felt A Funeral in My Brain" by Emily Dickinson

On December 10, 1830, an American poet named Emily Dickinson was born in Amherest, Massachusetts. She passed away on May 15, 1886 at the young age of fifty-six. I am a huge fan of Dickinson and her writing style, recently I discovered she wrote a poem that I haven’t read yet, until now. “I Felt A Funeral in My Brain,” has become one of my new favorite pieces of literature. Dickinson is able to convey such strong emotions beautifully into words, something I try to aspire to do.

In Dickinson’s first stanza of this poem, she symbolizes that the “funeral” her brain is experiencing is in fact a situation the speaker is going through and is making the speaker feel overwhelmed to the point that he/she has shut off their brain. The “mourners” Dickinson refers to the loved ones of the speaker trying to get through to him/her and comfort them in their time of need. The “service” is in fact a gathering of the speaker and his/hers loved ones discussing the speaker’s situation. The speaker’s heart beats faster and faster, which Dickinson refers the speaker’s heart as a loud “drum.” The “box” is a symbol of the speaker’s situation. The situation has been discussed between the speaker and his/hers loved ones and now the loved ones have finally gotten through to their beloved speaker.

D’Angelo 2

The two words “funeral” and “brain” stuck out to me the most in this poem for many reasons. I feel that Dickinson purposely capitalized the first letter of those two words for emphasis and to think differently when viewing those two words out of our daily context of them. Funerals, in most cases give a person closure after losing a love one. Brain represents life, without brain activity are we as people actually living? The things the brain goes through correspond to the life experiences we as people endure on a daily basis.

Personally, I believe this poem is about the death of a situation a person is going through. By having a “funeral” of a situation, one has acknowledged the situation, assessed solutions to the situation and now they’re putting their situation to rest. Having a funeral gives people closer whether they see it at first or not. Knowing that your loved one, or in the poem’s case a situation is in a sense packaged in a box that you are able to go back to and asses one’s life changes the entire concept of “not being there” a whole lot bearable