Samuel Butler once said, “Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forget life, to be at peace.” This was similar to how Emily Dickinson viewed death, it was not something to be feared, but something to be embraced. Many of Emily Dickinson’s poems focus on this theme of death. Emily Dickinson’s early life and encounters with death led to the themes of death and dying in Dickinson’s works “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” and “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain”. Many of the events that occurred during Dickinson’s early life caused her obsession with death. Dickinson was born December 10, 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her father, Edward, was a busy politician who served as a representative for Massachusetts in Congress from 1852 to 1855 (Dagnall). Emily had two siblings her brother, William Austin Dickinson, and her sister, Lavinia Norcross Dickinson. All three of them attended school at Amherst Academy.
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Due to many deaths of loved one’s early in Dickinson’s life, she was plagued with multiple mental disorders such as depression and anxiety. These can be clearly seen in her poem “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain”. Dickinson uses repetitive language such as “Kept treading-treading-till it seemed” and “Kept beating-beating- till I thought” (Dickinson). This repetitive language is a clear indication of how a person can slowly make someone go insane. For example the method of Chinese Water Torture. This was a process where water was dropped on the exact spot of a person’s forehead repeatedly. It would cause the person being interrogated allegedly becomes insane. This process is similar to “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain” because it is the same words being repeated constantly, conveying Dickinson’s insanity to the
Due to many deaths of loved one’s early in Dickinson’s life, she was plagued with multiple mental disorders such as depression and anxiety. These can be clearly seen in her poem “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain”. Dickinson uses repetitive language such as “Kept treading-treading-till it seemed” and “Kept beating-beating- till I thought” (Dickinson). This repetitive language is a clear indication of how a person can slowly make someone go insane. For example the method of Chinese Water Torture. This was a process where water was dropped on the exact spot of a person’s forehead repeatedly. It would cause the person being interrogated allegedly becomes insane. This process is similar to “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain” because it is the same words being repeated constantly, conveying Dickinson’s insanity to the