Sample Student Research Project 2018: Essay
LITR
4328 American Renaissance / Model Assignments
Sample Student Research Project 2018:
Essay
Calyssa Rosene
15
November 2018
The Sound of Madness: The Psych Behind the Work of Poe and Dickinson
Romanticism is an umbrella term that spans over multiple genres in
poetry. According to Dr. White, romantic is “anything but the here and now, or
whatever isn’t”. In the work of Poe and Dickinson, romanticism spreads out
through not only the gothic, but through a focus on feelings and emotions as
presented by each writer. A primary characteristic of the gothic is creepy or
startling sounds, a characteristic which can be seen in
The Tell-Tale Heart and
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe, and in
I Felt a Funeral in My Brain by Emily
Dickinson. In each work, the narrator at some point details sounds and noises
that they are encountering which assists in the feelings of paranoia or anxiety
in their own ways. Using journals written on various topics such as the lives of
the authors as well as psychiatric and mental illnesses, I will research how
these sounds along with symbols can affect the mood and the mental health of the
narrator of each work.
Has a sound in the real world ever affected you in a negative manner?
Have you ever been woken by the sounds of a lawnmower or a weed-eater revving on
and off steadily at eight in the morning on a Sunday? That repetitive ruckus
pounding inside of your brain as you hope that an end comes to it, so you can
soundly go back to sleep and enjoy your rest. Unwanted noise has been linked to
annoyance and even anxiety over recent research. The phenomena of sensory
overload is tied to multiple mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety,
schizophrenia, ADHD, and even autism.
Some of the symptoms of sensory overload include difficulty focusing,
extreme irritability, restlessness, discomfort, stress, fear, and anxiety about
your surroundings, and higher levels of sensitivity to items that may touch your
skin such as clothing (Watson).
This experience can also trigger violent levels of paranoia, as we see in
the narrator of Poe’s The Tell-Tale
Heart. We know that the narrator has committed an unforgiveable crime by
murdering an innocent man due to the fact that he had an “evil eye” that
offended the narrator. At the moment of his hiding out in the old man’s living
space while he waited for his moment to strike, he claims he could hear the
heartbeat of the old man as he could sense that he was in some sort of danger.
The narrator says, “the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must
burst. And now a new anxiety seized me --the sound would be heard by a
neighbour!”, and while it is impossible that any neighbor would be able to heart
the old man’s heart racing, the narrator felt as though it was the loudest noise
in the world at that moment thanks to sensory overload (Poe).
When
experiencing sensory overload, typical noise levels become heightened, and a car
honking down the street becomes a horn blowing right into your ear canal. In the
end of the tale, the narrator begins to hear the beating of the old man’s heart
once more. At the first sign of hearing, he explains that the sound is “much
such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton”, but as time passes the
sound continuously grows louder and louder until he reveals his crimes to the
police as he believes they are mocking him and pretending that they cannot hear
the beating heart that realistically only he can hear (Poe). Critically ill
humans with mental health issues can “experience a narrowed perception of their
environment due to fear, pain, anxiety, confusion, hypoxemia, or even
medications, making them extremely susceptible to sensory overload”
(Lindenmuth). The narrator is showing signs of extreme anxiety, fear, and
paranoia within the walls of his own home due to the noises that he believes
everyone in the room can hear apart from himself. From the beginning of the
tale, he admits to the reader that the “disease had sharpened my senses --not
destroyed --not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard
all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How,
then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily --how calmly I can tell you
the whole story” (Poe). The reader now knows that he has a disease from the
start, and it feels as though the narrator is attempting to convince the reader
that he is in good shape as he will “healthily” tell us his tale. Though the
disease is never brought forward in the light, it is not uncommon to assume that
the narrator is suffering from a mental or psychological disorder.
Another work by Poe in which we see the narrator experience negative affects
from sound is The Raven. Remember
that one of the symptoms of sensory overload is restlessness or discomfort, as
this is showcased in the tale once the plot begins to pick up. After hearing the
‘tapping’ noise a couple of times, the narrator says “Sir,” said I, “or Madam,
truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently
you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—Darkness there
and nothing more” (Poe). While the narrator was certain that he heard the
tapping sound at the door, he opened it to reveal nothing but the evening’s
darkness. The noise was interrupting his resting, and he felt confusion at the
sight of no one standing upon his chamber door. Apart from the tapping, the
narrator can be seen growing anxious at the raven saying ‘nevermore’ and nothing
else. The narrator desperately wants answers from this unwanted guest, and he
begins to have a sort of mental breakdown. As we know, in
The Tell-Tale Heart, the sound of a
heartbeat was a strong symbol in the reaction of the narrator. In
The Raven, the narrator says, “So
that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating ’Tis some visitor
entreating entrance at my chamber door” and the sound of a heartbeat begins to
aid in claiming another victim, although that is not the star sound within this
work (Poe). The fear and anxiety begin approaching the narrator as he peers out
over the darkness and wonders where the source of the tapping was. As silence
crept through the air, an eerie stillness came with it as he says “Deep into
that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming
dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before” (Poe). While there are not as many
connections to sounds of a heartbeat or knocking as there were in
The Tell-Tale Heart, we do see
anxiety tied mostly in with the Raven’s constant response of ‘Nevermore’. The
raven offers his response at the end of each verse, and the first line of the
following verse consistently shows a break in the narrator’s health as he grows
more and more angry and paranoid that this mysterious creature will not provide
him with any sort of real information as to why it has appeared.
Apart
from the sounds of the poem connected with mental illness, the raven can also be
seen as a symbol of depression. This dark, looming creature has shown up
unannounced and unwanted, much like depression does amongst humans who suffer
from mental illness. The narrator tells the raven “leave my loneliness
unbroken”, or untouched, which tells the reader that the narrator is used to his
isolation and silence (Poe). Being isolated is something that worsens depression
and can cause the person experiencing it to feel more lethargic, leading to
sleeping often to shut down the mind. This can take us back to the narrator
being upset that the tapping on the door has disrupted him from taking a nap
inside of his chambers, as those who suffer with depression can become irritable
when their normal routines have become disrupted by an outside force. Something
else that can support the idea of the raven being a figure for depression is the
entire last verse. The narrator says:
“And
the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On
the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And
his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And
the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And
my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall
be lifted—nevermore!” (Poe).
Depression does not tend to go away in a hurry. The raven does not move after he
is told to by our narrator, and his eyes are described as a demon’s, something
of an evil, dark, or negative manner. Then the narrator describes the light
leaving the raven’s shadow on the floor, with his soul under the cape of that
shadow, and as he says his soul shall never be lifted again this reads as the
narrator giving up and surrendering to the mental illness. There was only some
presence of sensory overload presented in this work through the sounds of the
heartbeat along with the tapping, but the theme of mental illness is still
presented through the symbolism of the raven as the depression of the narrator.
A poem such as I Felt a Funeral
for My Brain by Emily Dickinson can be analyzed in many different ways by a
reader. Is the author telling the story of a personal decline in mental health,
or are there items to discuss that stretch beyond that plain? In a journal
written by Schoberlein, Dickinson was said to be quite fascinated by the anatomy
of the human brain and studied it in multiple different ways in her years as the
rise of insane asylums began in her home state of Massachusetts. The journal
writes, “Enjoying a degree of schooling that was, by any comparison, remarkable
for her time and learning almost exclusively from textbooks designed for her
male peers, Emily Dickinson understood from a fairly young age what the brain
was, what it did, and what it looked like” (Schoberlein). There are multiple
sounds that can be seen throughout the poem such as “treading” or footsteps, and
a repetitive “beating” like a drum. Sounds of a plank breaking before “hitting a
world” are also read and heard by the reader.
Upon
reading the poem for the first time, it is easy to assume that the narrator is
descending into madness and falling into a hole that they will not be able to
crawl out of. In fact, many of Dickinson’s works revolve around the brain and
mental health or illness, and while it is very easy to read into the symbolism
within the facets of the poem, Schoberlein believes that this poem has taken on
a literal sense. He writes:
“Dickinson is describing an incident that disrupts or “overrides reason,” and
unfolds as a “morbid process” …There is movement (“treading”) and pulsating
sensation (“beating-beating”) as the nerves struggle to compensate. Following an
undescribed causal event, images occur of increased mental activity— perhaps we
witness here a person here whose “brains are over-worked” (Schoberlein).
Speaking of an over worked brain, they can actually cause sensory overload as
the brain cannot separate the multiple stimuli that the body is surrounded by,
therefore causing chaos in the actions and thought processes of the person
experiencing it all. Responses from sensory overload can include hallucinations,
decreased secondary process thinking (reasoning), increased primary process
thinking (fantasy), time distortion, paranoia, anxiety, depression, and feelings
of unreality (Lindenmuth). The grief that is able to produce the “funeral” in
the brain does not have to create any sort of symbolism to the reader as
Dickinson decides to focus on the events of the brain in a real-world scenario.
Schoberlein writes, “Grief that approaches insanity is, here, not an abstract
longing, a sad gaze, or a tear on the cheek—it is a material event in the
brain”, meaning that it is a tangible event that the narrator is processing her
grief through. The beating of the drums can be read either as a sensory
experience or as a literal process of the pulse running through the blood stream
and through the brain itself. There is also the idea of the plank breaking which
is the loss of reason in the brain, as the poem does depict a decline in mental
health that can either be seen as personal for Dickinson, or an interpretation
from what could happen in the brain when one goes through a catastrophic event
with her knowledge of the physical brain that she has studied. Another sound in
the poem that the reader can point out is that of the bell of the Heavens.
Altogether, the reader has the thought of footsteps treading, the beating of a
drum, the creaking of a box, a bell, silence, and finally a plank breaking and
falling. The multitude of sounds assists the reader in analyzing the mental
state of the narrator.
While
experiencing sensory overload, the person involved can often hear every small
noise around them such as someone biting their nails, someone scratching their
arm, someone turning the pages of a book, and even the breathing of those around
them. It can be overwhelming and lead to a decline in mental health either
temporarily or permanently depending on how often the person is affected. The
narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart could
not escape the sound of a heart beating and it took over every single one of his
senses as it enveloped him into madness, causing him to tell on himself with a
murder he committed. In The Raven,
our narrator is disturbed by a tapping noise at his chamber door as he finds
nothing is there more than once, only to eventually be met by a raven who
symbolizes the negative effects of isolation on his own depressed state.
Finally, we arrive to I Felt a Funeral
for My Brain as the narrator encounters multiple different sounds as they
report their steep decline of mental health. Where there are sounds, madness
trails not long after as we see through these three works by Poe and Dickinson.
The symbolism that the authors place behind these sounds and symbols shed light
on how easily mental health can be affected, and how the environment of someone
is important in deciding how well they uphold that mental health.
Works
Cited
Dickinson, Emily. "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain." Poetry Foundation. 1998.
Web.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45706/i-felt-a-funeral-in-my-brain-340
Lindenmuth, Jane. Sensory Overload . 1980.
www-jstor.org.libproxy.uhcl.edu/stable/pdf/3462693.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A24a781331bee902aae286b13036a87bb.
Poe,
Edgar A. "The Raven." Edgar Allan Poe:
Complete Tales and Poems. Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books, 2002. 773.
Print.
Poe,
Edgar Allan. "The Tell-Tale Heart - Poe's Works ." Edgar Allan Poe Museum :
Poe's life, legacy, and Works : Richmond, Virginia . 2018. Web.
http://www.poemuseum.org/the-tell-tale-heart
Schoberlein, S. (2018). Insane in the Membrane: Emily Dickinson Dissecting
Brains.
https://muse-jhu-edu.libproxy.uhcl.edu/article/602398. 19 Nov. 2018.
Watson, Kathryn. What is Sensory
Overload? 2018.
https://www.healthline.com/health/sensory-overload
White, Craig. Literature 4328 American Renaissance.
coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/4232/default.htm
"Great Star" flag of pre-Civil War USA