"I felt a Funeral, in my Brain": Metaphor

      In I felt a Funeral, in my Brain by Emily Dickinson, the author creates metaphor to describe the narrator's decay of mind.  The speaker seems to be slowly losing her sense of control and rationality.The general metaphor in this poem compares the speaker's sense of dying to a funeral.    As she descends into madness, the "beating, beating" causes the narrator's mind to go "numb", further hinting as her deterioration (Dickinson).  This "beating" of the funeral drums is a metaphor for a headache.  Also, in both dying and at the  event of a funeral, a feeling of great sadness and suffering is experienced, but is followed by a feeling of solitude.  Moreover, the narrator speaks of "finished knowing" (Dickinson).  In a funeral, the closing of coffin means the end to knowing the physical state of that person.  Concerning the progression of death, a finished knowing most likely is the brain ceasing to function.  This usage of figurative language serves to link the gloomy images of the progression of a funeral to the symptoms of death.