“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” by Emily Dickinson

In the poem, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” by Emily Dickinson, a literary technique commonly utilized is imagery. In each stanza, Dickinson uses imagery to paint a picture of what is happening to her. She has created a scene of a funeral through and through, beginning with the procession and ending with the burial. All the while, she portrays herself as within the coffin. However the imagery she uses adds to the depressing tone and topic of the poem. The photograph of “mourners to and fro kept treading – treading…” creates the idea of gloominess (Dickinson, 776). Mourners of the dead are often upset and crying, and the word treading creates the image of a person moving along as though they are being held back by some resistance, in this case, the death of a loved one. Furthermore, the line, “and creak across my Soul,” creates the sense of finality the author was focusing on (Dickinson, 776). As the reader pictures the coffin burying the deceased person, it closes of their soul from the world. As Dickinson successfully portrayed, her soul was being cut off or separated from reality by some force; in the case of the poem, a coffin.