For Whom the Bells Toll (Wait, Wrong Literature...)

I must admit, Dickinson's "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" was my favorite poem of the eight selections for this week. I personally find her auditory imagery far more powerful than most visual imagery. Several poets will describe events with colors, or personify nature to give it more life, or create other visual images that evoke either wonderful or terrible feelings. However, it seems that a startling majority of poets rely solely on visual imagery. After a time, this repetition often causes visual imagery to lose its potential power. Using virtually exclusively auditory imagery, however, Dickinson creates a powerful, booming cascade of images that are so unique and startlingly original that they not only attract the reader's attention, but demand it. A poet simply cannot write a description of "a Drum--/Kept beating--beating--till I thought/ My Mind was going numb--" (5-7) and not intend that it carry a substantial amount of power. Dickinson takes these concepts and images that are usually visual, such as space and heavens, and creates a completely original association with them as describing them as beginning to "toll" (12) and as being a "Bell" (13), respectively. To me, that is where Dickinson's true power in her poetry lies: in her ability to take a known and accepted idea or image and convolute it into a startling and powerful creation.

Mad World (Question 10)

In "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain," Emily Dickinson utilizes powerfully vivid and unique imagery. In describing the funeral, Dickinson almost exclusively appeals to the sense of hearing. The speaker hears the service as "like a Drum--/Kept beating--beating" (5-6). She hears "them lift a Box" (9)--that is, her casket--rather than feeling it being lifted, and she hears the pallbearers "creak across [her] Soul" (10). Space "tolls" (12), "the Heavens were a Bell" (13), and she is simply "but an Ear" (14), with "Silence" as "some strange Race" (15). These strong, thunderous sounds and descriptions evoke a sense of entrapment and despair. The lack of sensations other than hearing also reflect the speaker's feeling of mental and/or emotional death, extending the image of the funeral in her brain. In the dark of night, it is not only the lack of vision that frightens many; it is the enhanced sense of hearing that truly spooks. By relying nearly solely on this sense, Dickinson writes into her poem a sense of fear, despair, and utter hopelessness.

A Stark Contrast (Imagery)

“We packed the lunch and two bottles of wine in the rucksack, and Bill put it on. I carried the rod-case and the landing-nets slung over my back. We started up the road and then went across a meadow and found a path that crossed the fields and went toward the woods on the slope of the first hill. We walked across the fields on the sandy path. The fields were rolling and grassy and the grass was short from the sheep grazing. The cattle were up in the hills. We heard their bells in the woods.”

-The Sun Also Rises, p 121

This paragraph, as well as the following few paragraphs, is a prime example of Hemingway’s use of imagery. Throughout the novel, he has sprinkled in bits of imagery and countless details. Now, though, he writes, it seems, for the sole purpose of describing the Basque landscape. Hemingway contrasts the variety of the land with the monotonous streets of Paris. In fact, by taking so much time describing the countryside, Hemingway seems to prefer the Basque country to Paris, which he describes limitedly. He also includes a couple mentions of hearing cowbells as Jake and Bill traverse the countryside. These appeal to the sense of hearing, strengthening the imagery of the passage. By writing to the senses of both sight and hearing, Hemingway presents a strong mental picture of the Basque region.