Insanity, Here I Come

In I felt a Funeral, in my Brain by Emily Dickinson uses an extended metaphor for her descent into madness. The first stanza is her realization that she is becoming mad. The mourners who move to and fro and tread are her thoughts that run rampant in her head. Additionally, the mourners are sad for the eventual descent into madness. The second stanza shows her progression through madness since she no longer experiences feelings. She has become numb and can no longer feel. In the third stanzas, she loses a precious and essential part of her mind. The loss of this part of the mind becomes a burden and chaos ensues. In the fourth stanza, that chaos emerges into sounds that force the mind to lose touch with reality. Her mind is nearly gone and she is alone, left with the silence of her empty mind since she no longer can think. The final stanza shows that she has lost all reason and she descends into madness, "And I dropped down, and down-- And hit a world, at every plunge" (Dickinson, 776). At every level her madness reveals something new to the speaker that can only be revealed through madness. Once she is in complete madness, she knows everything and something happens that suggests that something exists beyond death or insanity.