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

Elements of despair evident from the inner workings of Emily Dickinson argon present in her poem, After Great Pain, A courtly timbre Comes--. Emily Dickinson led a difficult life which left her alone. These feelings of sorrow and isolation have produced workings by Dickinson which question human existence and thought. Such works include the theme of despair which is inextricably related to spiritual strivings and misgivings. They lead inevitably to her thematic concern with mans knowledge of death and his imagine 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 terms of a funeral. By paraphrasing the first stanza,After great 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 formal service. Afte r 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 second 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 also 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, that instead of the state of mind at death. This perception includes the premise of one who has lost all sense of identity. The var ious parts of the anatomy noted in the poem, such as the nerves, heart, and feet, are no longer 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 afterwards a great pain is actually no pain at all, but instead the loss of form, time, and space. Throughout After Great Pain, A Formal Feeling Comes--, Dickinson uses many forms of connotation, such as imagery, symbolism, and irony.