Emily Dickinson's Poem "I Felt a Funeral in My Brain"

Havelock Ellis, a British psychologist and author, comments, “Pain and death are part of life. To reject them is to reject life itself.” Despite historically being known as a recluse, American poet Emily Dickinson certainly did not reject life, in fact, pain and death are two topics that she often wrote about. In the literary realm, Dickinson is often known for the ambiguity of her poems, as she commonly writes in vague metaphors. By using figurative language, aural imagery, and poetic music, Dickinson’s poem, “I felt a Funeral in my Brain,” depicts the feeling of a literal pain in the head, such as a headache or migraine, through the metaphor of a funeral. 

The poem uses figurative language to create imagery associated with a funeral, suggesting that whatever pain the speaker is enduring in his or her head is so painful that he or she would rather die. The first line, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” introduces us to the funeral metaphor, in preparation for the descriptions to follow. With the word “funeral,” immediately the reader’s head is filled with all of the images associated with a funeral, such as caskets and funeral dirges. In the last line of the second stanza, “My Mind was going numb” (8), is reminiscent of the dullness of feeling sometimes associated with grieving. Once more the reader is reminded of the funeral metaphor, yet, more literally, the speaker’s mind is “going numb” as a result of the pain. This pain is so great it has anesthetized the senses.