After great pain, a formal feeling comes –

After great pain, a formal feeling comes –

The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –

The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’

And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?

The Feet, mechanical, go round –

A Wooden way

Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –

Regardless grown,

A Quartz contentment, like a stone –

This is the Hour of Lead –

Remembered, if outlived,

As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –

First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

F(372)
        
           Having experienced a lot of death in her lifetime and having a view of funeral processions from her bedroom window, Dickinson had ample experience dealing with grief. Using her writing as an outlet for her pain, she often wrote about loss and the possibility of life after death. In this poem the speaker walks the reader through the progression of grief. Once the pain subsides, they are left in a numb dissociative state, unsure of who they are and how much time has passed. After enduring the paralyzation and confusion of grief, they walk around on autopilot, not grounded to the Earth or the present moment.

            When people experience great pain, they assume they have endured the worst when in fact they are only passing through the first stage of their grief. When reading this poem, I am reminded of another of Dickinson's pieces, “Pain – has an Element of Blank – ” which follows a similar theme of how easy it is to lose a sense of time and self when dealing with grief. Once the initial shock of the loss has subsides, a numb, lifeless sensation kicks in and they are left questioning everything. Although the process varies from person and situation, it is rarely ever cut and dry. There will be moments when one will feel everything and nothing all at once, but it is up to the person whether they escape with peace or perish in despair. Throughout the poem, the speaker uses words like “tomb,” “stiff,” “mechanical,” “wooden,” and “lead” to depict how weighed down they feel by their own emotions. When one is in the thick of their pain, it is difficult to see beyond it to a time when things are better. With the use of “tomb” – which elicits thoughts of emptiness – the speaker places a picture of a loss of life and essential purpose in the reader’s mind. This is accurately depicted in the above image as it displays a person slowly fading into a diminished version of themselves as they feebly attempt to hold themselves together.

             To further this feeling of emptiness, the word “mechanical” is used to suggest something which is robotic and unfeeling. Incapable of becoming emotionally invested in their surroundings, machines are immune to pain; they are unable to carry out actions that are beyond what they have been programmed to do. People processing grief are reduced to basic human functions of eating, breathing, and sleeping. To explain Dickinson’s process of creating this phenomenon of being alive and not living, Francis Manley says, “Her problem was to describe an essentially paradoxical state of mind in which one is alive but yet numb to life, both a living organism and a frozen form” (262). This paradoxical existence is intriguing as it highlights something which we all recognize without full acknowledgment. When someone experiences a “great pain,” there will come a time when they reach the end of their ability to outwardly express their grief. No longer able to accurately convey the pain they’re feeling, they yield to the belief that there is nothing that can be done to alleviate it. It is at this point that the numbness settles in as they have now given their grief free reign, no longer attempting to suppress it with anger and denial. Hence, they are alive but frozen in their pain.

With the use of staggering dashes, Dickinson recreates the feeling that comes when one is making the decision of whether to succumb to their grief or accept it. The decision isn’t one that comes without doubt, second-guessing, or back-tracking and by incorporating dashes between each stage of the process, the reader is taken into that feeling of indecision. This is further reflected in the final stanza as the speaker seems to be at a cross roads of sink or swim. Throughout the poem, they have avoided language that would suggest that their grief is a thing of the past; it is something they continue to struggle with. This closing quatrain is the summation and climax of their experience as they anticipate the conclusion and ask the lingering question: Will I survive? The tone of the speaker at this point is uncertain, and yet hopeful. They consider the possibilities, comparing their triumph over the pain to one who survives hypothermia or “freezing.” They will recall the initial force of the pain, the subsequent sensation of emptiness, and the “letting go,” which can either be interpreted as death or a point of acceptance. By returning to the dash and thus leaving the meaning open-ended, Dickinson – much like reality – allows the reader to decide how grief ends.

Manley, Francis. “An Explication of Dickinson's ‘After Great Pain.’” Modern Language Notes,
vol. 73, no. 4, 1958, pp. 260–264.