After Great Pain, A Formal Feeling Comes-- :: essays research papers

Elements of despair evident from the inner fiddles of Emily Dickinson are present in her poem, after owing(p) Pain, A stiff Feeling Comes--. Emily Dickinson led a difficult life which left her alone. These feelings of suffer and isolation have produced works by Dickinson which question human worldly concern and thought. Such works include the theme of despair which is inextricably think to spiritual strivings and misgivings. They lead inevitably to her thematic concern with mans knowledge of death and his dream of immortality, directly relevant to After Great Pain, A Formal Feeling Comes--.In this poem, Emily Dickinson renders the extinction of consciousness by pain in the ass in terms of a funeral. By paraphrasing the first stanza,After bang-up pain, a formal feeling comes--The Nerves sits ceremonious, like Tombs--The stiff Heart, questions was it He, that bore,And Yesterday, or Centuries before?The reader perceives the first of three stages of a funeral ceremony, the form al service. After the onset of suffering through death, the presence of finality through a funeral rises. The second stanza brings with it the second stage of the ceremony, carrying off the casket by pallbearers.The Feet, mechanical, go round--A wooden wayOf Ground, or Air, or Ought--Regardless grown,A Quartz contentment, like a stone--The feet of the pallbearers work rhythmically and mechanically, performing their duty. The final stanza includes the final stage of a funeral,the burial.This is the instant of Lead--Remembered, if outlived,As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow--First--Chill--then Stupor--then the letting go-- The reader notes that this is the time of finality, and of parting with the deceased. It is as well as a time of final recollections, and of healing.In an interpretation of this poem, Dickinson is neither speaking of the persona, or the funeral ritual, but instead of the state of mind at death. This perception includes the supposal of one who has lost all sen se of identity. The various parts of the systema skeletale noted in the poem, such as the nerves, heart, and feet, are no drawn-out part of one central being,but now moving through the acts of a meaningless ceremony. In essence, they are lifeless forms enacted in a trance. As the idea of a funeral ceremony subsides, the once living bodys form emerges. The formal feeling that comes after a great pain is actually no pain at all, but instead the blemish of form, time, and space. Throughout After Great Pain, A Formal Feeling Comes--, Dickinson uses galore(postnominal) forms of connotation, such as imagery, symbolism, and irony.