"I felt a Funeral, in my Brain"

"And then a Plank in Reason, broke,

And I dropped down, and down -

And hit a World, at every plunge,

And Finished knowing - then -"

The imagery in this poem is highly linked to the sense of hearing.  While I read this, the TV was on and my dad came in to talk to my dog- yes, my family is very odd- yet while I was reading this, I still was able to really hear the sounds of "Mourners" (2), "a Drum" (6), "creak" (9), "and Silence" (15).  I do not actually think that I have ever read a poem where sound was the major feature of it, but it was quite an experience to imagine the scene through the sounds in my head.  Dickinson was very smart to use the sense of sound for this poem since it really describes the inner workings of this person's mind instead of the traditional poem that is depicting some wonderful scene from nature.

I picked the above selection of lines because they featured an anaphora through the repetition of the word "and."  This really set the stage for the dramatic effect in this poem.  I felt like this entire poem was leading up to the inevitable suicide of the person being described (though it will be very embarrassing if that is wrong).  This person was throwing themselves their own funeral, because they felt like no one would come.  He or she imagined it- silent- no one was there to say their goodbyes.

The last two stanzas feature a large juxtaposition of good versus evil.  In the fourth stanza, I believe that Dickinson is describing the chaos in heaven as the angels try to frantically to speak the person into not going through with the suicide, but the Devil won over the diseased mind.  The last stanza depicts the snapping out of reality and killing themselves.  The last stanza seems to display the idea that people who commit suicide go to Hell by having had the person "dropped down, and down" (18) as if they are in Dante's world and slowly falling to the level of Judas.  They finished knowing what it was like to live in a world of real pain when they reached Hell, which led to the closure of the poem.