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Mind And Spirit Realization

Emily Dickinson’s Poem 280 “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain.” is about   the death of a body and the spirit’s realization and acceptance of this death.
The poem   is broken into five stanzas of four lines each using an iambic meter of 4-3-4-3.   The rhyme scheme is A-B-C-B with the exception of the last stanza. The tone is sad and somber much like that of a dirge. This is illustrated when Dickinson writes, “A Service, like a Drum Kept beating, beating, …”.
In the first stanza the brain senses “felt” the body’s death   “Funeral” but has not completely grasped   what has happened “Sense was breaking through”.   “ “Mourners to and fro Kept treading”   indicates that the spirit is aware of its separateness from its normal state of being; no longer having interaction with the living throughout the poem. The spirit remains in the world in which it once lived, held down by “lead boots” as the sounds of heaven are heard as the spirit becomes “an Ear” capable of hearing the “Bell” that would be the heavens. This could not have been heard while attached to a living body.   It is at this moment that the spirit realizes and grasps the concept of what has happened to it.; as well as what it has now become.   The author says,   “And I, and Silence, some strange Race Wrecked, solitary, here”. “Race” refers to life and “Wrecked” to the end of it. “solitary” refers to the singleness and   loneliness experienced in not knowing what will happen next. Then Dickinson   explains the understanding of the current state of the spirit by saying “And then a Plank in Reason, broke,”. It is here that the understanding of what is going on is reiterated.
After the plank has broken the body and spirit are   “dropped down, and down-” they “hit a World, at every plunge,”. The first world experienced was when the body and spirit were one.   This first world takes place prior to the beginning of the poem. The life as it was known was ended by one means or another which is our first plunge. That plunge takes...