After great pain, a formal feeling comes: Themes & Linking Poems

“After great pain, a formal feeling comes” explores the cyclical nature of suffering and healing. Dickinson contemplates the process of mourning and recovery, suggesting the human ability to endure and survive pain. This is suggested by the repeated theme of endurance in poems such as “Hope is the thing with feathers”.
The poem explores the numbness that often follows intense pain or tragedy, seen in the lines “The Feet, mechanical, go round / Of Ground, or Air, or Ought—”. This reflects the notion of the physical body continuing its functions even in the face of emotional distress.
Dickinson’s exploration of the body’s mechanical nature in the face of pain connects to her wider meditation on mortality. This theme bridges this poem with “Because I could not stop for Death”.

Dickinson uses images of nature, particularly winter, to convey feelings of numbness and desolation, such as in “The Snows of yester-year,”.
In “It’s like the Light”, Dickinson compares emotional pain to a sudden burst of light, linking the natural element of light to human experience.
She also uses visual imagery relating to the weather and the seasons across her poetry to reflect emotional states. Similar imagery can be found in the poem “There’s a certain Slant of light”.

“After great pain, a formal feeling comes” addresses the concept of ineffability or the inability to express feelings. This aligns with her poem “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”.
Dickinson achieves this by using the paradoxical language such as “The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs”. The phrase combines a connotation of activity (nerves) with a symbol of stillness and death (tombs), evoking a sense of confusion and dislocation.
Dickinson’s frequent use of dashes contributes to this theme. The dashes represent hesitation or disruption, reflecting the theme of the inexpressible and the difficulty in communicating emotional pain.

“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” also explores the theme of mental distress and its physical manifestation. Both poems use imagery relating to formal occasions to make sense of internal turmoil.
“There’s a certain Slant of light” and “Hope is the thing with feathers” both utilise nature as a metaphor for inner emotional states, much like “After great pain, a formal feeling comes”.
“Because I could not stop for Death” shares the themes of mortality and the ineffability of suffering, as it also examines the human struggle to comprehend death and its aftermath.