I Felt a Funeral in my Brain

In Emily Dickinson's poem, I Felt a Funeral in my Brain, there was one main and essential metaphor given. The poem compares the speakers recent mental collapse to a funeral. When one thinks of a funeral, the first thing that jumps into mind is obviously death. In this way, I believe that Dickinson asserted that the speaker's mind was dying just as one dies right before their funeral. As the poem progresses, we can see the progression of the speaker's mind go from sane to insane. "And mourners, to and fro, keapt treading, treading," (Dickinson, 776). This description of the mourners gives picture of how the speaker's brain felt to him. He was slowly losing his mind. Using the repetition of the word "treading" in this quote and of the word "beating" in the second stanza, we can see this progression by acknowledging the spiratic tone of the poem.  These thumping and bumping sounds might possibly be a severe headache that make him feel as if someone is crawling inside his brain. As the poem progresses we get a sense that because of his recent mental disorder, the speaker becomes more and more lonely and more and more crazy. "And I dropped down, and down- and hit a world, at every plunge, and finished knowing-then-" (Dickinson, 776).