I Felt A Funeral In My Brain Analysis

The poem “The Lesson” written by Maya Angelou is about the trials of life and death. In the poem Maya demonstrates that life needs to be embraced, even at its worst moments. Maya…..

Thoughts in regards to suicide often include empathy for the dead, and wonder as to what drove the person to end their life. All too often, people ignore a rather important consideration: the thoughts and feelings of those left behind. The loved ones are left with the remorse, despondence, and grieving, while the dead are absolved of their worldly anguish. In “The Grieving Never Ends”, Roxanne Roberts employs a variety of rhetorical tactics including metaphors, imagery, tone, and syntax to illustrate the indelible effects of suicide on the surviving loved ones. Roberts effectively uses metaphors to express the complex, abstract concepts around suicide and human emotion in general.

As a young child, Sek-Lung has difficulty understanding his grandmother’s speaking of death. He describes the moment it became clear she would die narrating, “I fell against her and cried, and there in my crying I knew she would die,” (Choy, 4) As the reader listens from Sek-Lung’s perspective, they can relate to either Grandmama, who greets death like an old friend, or Sek-Lung, who is beginning to grasp this new concept. Grandmama personifies death, saying, “That is my body fighting with Death. He is in this room now,” (4).While she describes it as a battle, she also seems to hold a sense of peace with the concept.

Often in literature a specific character is essential to illuminating the larger themes of the piece. In William Faulkner’s novel As I Lay Dying, imagery and language are used to illustrate the fragility of existence and identity shown through his characters’ consciousness. The story revolves around the Bundren family, who are poor country folk, depicting an already ill Addie Bundren, whose dying wish is to be buried in Jefferson and her family’s journey getting her there. The family endures multiple obstacles before finally being able to burry Addie, along the way we see each character’s internal battles as well. Addie’s death triggers the reoccurring thought of death within the characters, ultimately altering their identities.

Emily Dickinson lived during a time when many would become very well acquainted with death. As such it would become a specter that was feared as it could make an appearance at any time. So looking at Dickinson 's work it seems rather interesting that taken as a collection there seems to be the tale of one character that comes to view death in a multitude of different ways throughout their life. First is the feared figure that leaves them restless, then death comes as something numbing but leaves the living to celebrate the life of the one that has passed, life as a story that is completed and finished upon death, and finally coming to see death as kind figure that takes one to a new home. this finally view is what paints death as something that is not to be feared but rather as something natural, it is the next

For my poetry paper I have chosen the poem "Kill the Day" by Donald Hall. A poem that goes through the process of what it is like to grieve for that significant other that passes away. The way Hall describes grieving makes it sounds as if there are stages to it. These stages can be categorized as denial, sorrow and anger and finally, acceptance. Each stage brings its own obstacles and challenge for one to deal with.

In this poem, Dickinson shows the idea of separation by death in human life and the consequences that come up following by death to people who left. A third event to me,/ So huge, so hopeless to conceive,(L. 4-5) The speaker feels disappointed toward death because death makes her apart from her friends or relatives. The anger reaction that the speaker expressed drives toward aggression but not result in aggressive acts. The aggressiveness just comes up in her mind as the feeling of upset.

Signifying Edgar Alan Poe’s unique style of writing, Lenore is a tragic tale typical of the author. It is commonly believed that this poem was a coping mechanism for Edgar Alan Poe’s wife Virginia’s illness. The main theme of the poem is the untimely death of a beautiful, young woman. The speaker is angry and grieved by Lenore’s death. His evident emotional state is signified with his ever changing sentiments.

Louise’s victory in accepting her husband’s death is a feeling that she now cannot live without. The ultimate death of Louise Mallard is one that represents physical and emotional defeat. In this dramatic short story, Chopin uses imagery to sew together a tapestry of emotions all encompassed in an ill-stricken widow. Works Cited Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.”

In her novel, The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath uses diction and tone to juxtapose the internal strife a character may experience with an an external normalcy. Protagonist Esther Greenwood exemplifies the tear that can occur between society and one of its members. The repetition of the word and idea of death is prevalent throughout the novel, found a majority of the time within Esther’s internal dialogue, portraying that she is obsessed with death, but contains it in her mind to avoid others knowing. Her reason for her secrecy reveals itself to be fear of appearing outside society’s realms. She proves this when each attempted suicide takes places far from the presence of others, such as her basement or any empty beach.

The first stanza of Emily Dickinson’s poem “I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain” hones in on the noxious idea of Dickinson’s own death, through creating a sad and dark mood. The first line, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” talks about a loss of memories and images in her brain (1). It is as if her thoughts are gone from her mind, the most central and essential part of the body, and she is saying goodbye to them, like a funeral does for a person. Because she is a writer, not being able to express herself through words, which she uses her brain for, would be a nightmare for her. Dickinson’s diction choices, such as “treading” and “sense breaking through” portray an internal fight occurring, with sense finally being the concept to tip her over, making

Disillusioned at the moment of death, the speaker in Emily Dickinson’s poem #465, plummets from her majestic spiritual expectations into the lowly position of simply being a carcass. Distracted by the anticipation of an impending ethereal experience, the speaker fails to recognize the significance of the fly at the moment of her death. Dickinson’s preliminary placement of the fly, “I heard a Fly buzz — when I died” in the beginning sentence offers a form of foreshadowing as well as emphasizes it’s roll (1). The speaker is encompassed by the ideas of her spiritual expectations and is waiting, “between the Heaves of Storm” for a heavenly excursion (4). However, the sound of the fly, an animal devoted to consuming the dead, brings reality to the audience that the speaker is simply a carcass waiting to be devoured.

Anne Sexton’s “The Truth the Dead Know” centers on one person’s struggle to overcome her reservations regarding grief and mortality. The speaker, after having attended the funeral of her father only three months after her mother passed way, indignantly leaves the service. While on a trip to Cape Cod with a loved one, observing the tranquil landscape, she reflects on the role of human connection in her life, and chooses to confront her feelings towards the dead. The speaker, initially bitter and resentful towards the concept of death, eventually comes to feel sympathy for the dead and their inability to be human.

Vision a motionless body lying on their deathbed. Their souls is departing from the decaying bones left on the earth. Death is nothing to be afraid of because it is a way of life. Death remains a great mystery and no one can figure it out or predict when the time will come to die. When death is mention, one might think about physical death.