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poem underscores Dickinson's understanding of her own poetic process by showing the demise of it

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dashes around the word 'then' in last line to represent black hole where she resides in silence

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repetition of word 'and' at the beginning of every line in the last stanza represents the collapse of voice in on itself

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by stanza four, physical sensation and connection to concrete world seems to slip away toward detachment

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speaker shifts to perspective of the soul, highlights the deterioration of sense

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description of funeral - readers don't see the world around the perspective but only feel distant vibrations

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first stanza opens with notion of a concrete experience that takes place at the nexus of an abstract being

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the two popular interpretations are that the poem is about the transition from life to death or that it is about the loss of reason (insanity)

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experience is fully internal

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Last few lines might imply that speaker is remembering her death from beyond the grave

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House in the fifth stanza can be seen as bridal house and speaker's grave. There is no door mentioned, suggests there is no escape from death and the domestic deadening that marriage brings

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Chill from the dew suggests emotional coldness that occurs when approaching your death. The journey equates the process of dying to the process of marriage

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Three images suggest phases of life cycle that speaker has passed and is passing through. Time has stopped for her

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The slow ride emphasizes the seriousness f speaker's "engagement date." Speaker does not resist date, emphasizes male-driven nature of courtship

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Personification provides the reader with understanding of difficult concept, allows reader to empathize (or hate, etc.) with ideas that otherwise might remain distant

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Woman speaks from grave, telling story of her seduction and journey toward death

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Underscores value Dickinson puts on her independence from worldly conventions and her fear of being caught up in them

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Poem is statement about negative aspects of marriage for independent woman in the nineteenth century

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The end is very confusing and leaves much to interpretation.
It could be that she has finally lost it and cannot even explain her illness anymore, there's no hope ?

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Basically, her mental state is deteriorating and the funeral is representing that

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Funeral - death
Her mind is going through something, mental instability

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Tippet=scarf
Gossamer=thin, filmy cobwebs/thin material, light, delicate

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Third stanza - maybe she is seeing her life (her life flashed before her eyes). In the next stanza it says that "rather - He passed us" possibly means that they are not actually moving, it's like a movie, she is watching her journey to death

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She acts as if Death is a kind man, maybe at the end she realizes where she is and that Death was taking her to her death

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Lots of dashes, only one period. Periods have finality, dashes do not.

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They are on a ride to a house (cornice-ornamental molding below ceiling). House refers to her coffin

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Death is personified as a man, so is Immortality who is only mentioned once

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Final line of poem is ambiguous. Could imply that the speaker had some kind of epiphany and is now mentally strong enough to describe her experience

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Carrying the casket to the gravesite, loud noise grows intolerable when funeral bells ring. Bell is loud and threatening, seems "As all the Heavens" are one bell and the speaker is "but an Ear." Speaker cannot remember time before bell (before funeral in mind - mental breakdown) began

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After the funeral has begun (which it has), it will not end until the speaker's mind is buried

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"Breaking through" conveys idea that breakdown can only be portrayed in terms of an explosion of feeling

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In the early stage of the breakdown, the speaker seems to feel that "sense was breaking through," and that some of her reason was battling with the mourners who plagued her

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The metaphor for the funeral is appropriate since a funeral is a ritual in which various stages are completed before the burial of the body. This corresponds to the to the various stages through which the speaker's mind passes before its final burial into the graveyard of madness

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The funeral is a metaphor, it is something like what the speaker felt in her brain when her mental troubles began

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Funeral is a common ritual, devastating emotional nature of which is appropriate for a poem about the devastation of the speaker's mind

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The images in poem relate to a funeral

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Dickinson uses familiar poetic devices to replicate the subject of her contemplation

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Reader must understand that the poem is an attempt to formalize a complex mental process in familiar language

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The poem is un-Wordsworthian and must be approached that way

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Another interpretation of the last line could be that the final "then--" marks the speaker's transition to a mental state where the representation of one's mind through language becomes impossible

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The thought that the speaker is telling story after mental collapse justifies the form of the poem only if the reader interprets the final line to mean "I finished knowing anything for sure after that terrible incident"

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Speaker is presumably telling story from point in time after mental collapse

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"I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" uses regular meter, rhyme scheme, and grammatical structures because Dickinson cannot truly replicate insanity so she portrays it as a physical sensation

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By William Wordsworth's standards, "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" does not convey the experience of madness

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Poem ends with one word to suggest timeless quality of separation

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Message of poem does not concern possibility of peaceful union with a divine being but does concern the awesome power of death- force which causes complete separation from life

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Punctuation - first stanza is only one that ends with period, other stanzas end in dashes. First stanza can be interpreted as the thesis statement of the poem. Period may suggest finality of death, dashes may suggest eternality of death

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Girl (persona realizes that death means complete separation from life

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Persona is now speaking from eternity

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Grave - diggings around it become part of landscape around a house, top of coffin becomes roof of house, ribbing around coffin becomes a cornice-seals door shut

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Carriage arrives at grave, persona suggests that she does not recognize her grave as a grave

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Dew - she is the source of attraction for the dew, she is dying, change is taking place (she is unaware), she attempts to rationalize the cold by blaming the dew and the thinness of her clothes

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Fourth stanza implies that persona is bound by time - rhythm is disrupted, heavy consonants, alliterated internal rhyme indicates change

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passage of carriage - funeral procession
Irony of slow journey, persona gives impression that she is unaware of the meaning of the journey throughout the first half of the poem

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Third stanza suggests more than a mere physical journey - imagery suggests the passage of a lifetime, journey from childhood

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Second stanza - ironically states that Death "knew no haste"  as if they had all the time in the world

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Beginning of poem is easily interpreted by reader as happy - peaceful images, rhythm, deceptive tone

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Female character in the poem is also the persona of the poem - key to understanding that there is irony in the poem

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Poem is about death but also about life - emphasizes what is lost after death, not what is gained

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Themes: Cycle of Life, Death, Time

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Describes what no living person can know - the moment the meaning of forever becomes clear
Looks at heads of horses and sees that they are going toward eternity
Suddenly remembers that Immortality has been sitting beside her the whole time

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hyperbole, realizes death and afterlife

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house is a grave, this is where her body will live while her soul journeys onward
Describes house as "Swelling on the Ground," image of fresh burial plot
Destination still mystery

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Children playing in ring - symbol for eternity
Grain represents natural world
Setting sun is universal clock

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Imagery - speaker points out scenery along the ride
Distracted by mortal world - maybe she knows she is seeing them for last time, took them for granted before so now they have more meaning

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People keep busy so that they don't have to think about death, speaker admits she is willing to put aside distractions and go with Death (charming maybe). Comments on Death's good manners, seduced

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Slow speed, maybe because woman is dead now, carriage transformed into hearse and they are part of funeral procession
Also possible that death has no concept of time (time and space are earthly concepts, death is not bound by vague human concepts)

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Immortality is also personified
No description of Immortality
Speaker barely notices him bc she's focused on Death

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Visit from death is usually not welcome but is in this poem - Death is a gentleman, polite, she is flattered to find herself in death's favor

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Death takes woman on ride to grave and beyond - reminder of cyclical nature of life