"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.

Brave New World - Eighteen

"'They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they're plagued with no mothers or fathers; they've got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave'" (pg 220).

In the above passage, Mustapha uses an anaphora (I think this counts?) through repeating the word they.  I find it ironic that he refers to the different castes as they, and never as we, as if he does not have the same luxuries.  This chapter really seems to characterize Mustapha as a totalitarian aimed at not letting the stability of his carefully calculated civilization.  I support this by the demeaning connotation I usually connect with calling a group of people they as opposed to a more suiting grouping term.  This anaphora portrays the various castes as actual people as opposed to just machines like had earlier been supposed by me.  Most of all, I feel like this repetition is Mustapha's way of reassuring himself that what he is doing is actually the correct path.  This hypothesis seems supported by the Controller who tells us that he even wanted to leave for a short time.  Mustapha appears to have all the support of his loyal followers, but people do seem, at this point in the novel, to be more opposed to several of the regulations.  Again though, his repetition in the above passage seems to be him reassuring himself that people will continue to follow these rules.

Also in this chapter, I realized the correlation between "Fordship" and a bishop, but that is another story.