Dickinson

Question 1

I felt a funeral in my brain

Answer 1

Theme = mental suffering loss of control
entrapment
oppression

“A service like a drum kept beating - beating” Aural imagery of paralysing beat aswell as hyphenation and repetition

“My mind was going numb”

“Boots of Lead” capitalisation, assonance of “o” gives image of weight and oppression

“And Being, but an Ear”= paralysed like a vulnerable ear trapped in a booming slipstream of noise

“Plank in Reason broke” reason fails and shatters

Question 2

I heard a fly buzz-when I died

Answer 2

Theme=mortality

“stillness in the room was like the stillness in the air between the heaves of storms”. sibilance = Sound of the tension and anticipation in the room like a static charge

“when the King Be witnessed-in the room” = “There interposed a Fly”. Bathos expecting God but only gets a fly. Seems to mock the pomp and ceremony associated with traditional religion

“With Blue-uncertain-stumbling Buzz- Between the light-and me” hyphenation used to show Dickinson’s faltering consciousness as it flickers in and out of awareness

Question 3

Metaphor in I heard a fly

Answer 3

Windows failed = her eyes failed

ends in “ I could not see-“ poem again ends in a hyphen leaves the question what happens next.

Question 4

There’s a certain Slant of Light

Answer 4

“There’s a certain slant of light Winter Afternoon-That oppresses, like the heft of Cathedral Tunes” = simile light weighs on Dickinson like solemn lugubrious music

“Heavenly Hurt” “Tis the Seal Despair” “An imperial affliction” = despair

“Where the Meanings are-“ maybe saying their is meaning in her hyphens

“When it comes the landscape listens-Shadows-hold their breath-When it goes, ‘tis like the Distance On the look of Death” = shows Dickinson’s despair is a transient thing that comes and goes. When it is there it is debilitating, but when not it is as remote as the distance on the look of death

Question 5

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

Answer 5

“sings the tune without the words” = hope is a constant background melody without words perhaps like Dickinson’s hyphens

“sweetest-in the Gale-is heard” = like heaves of storm

“little Bird That kept so many warm” =Even though the bird is little it still keeps so many warm like hope it’s a miracle-maker

“Yet, never, in Extremity, It asked a crumb - of Me.” = hope is selfless and altruistic, uncontrollably generous. It can remind her of something more than her despair such as beauty and nature.

Ends in a full stop indicating a level of closure and acceptance from Dickinson which she did not have