After great pain, a formal feeling comes

The poem is a lyric, as it’s short and focuses on a personal issue—how pain impacts a person’s body and mind. As the poem guides the reader through the consequences of acute suffering, it’s a didactic poem. In other words, it teaches the reader a lesson about trauma, providing a guide for the course suffering takes and how a person might survive it. The genre turns the speaker into a teacher, and the reader—the audience—into a student. By the conclusion of the poem, the audience learns how a person processes extreme distress and what permits a person to move on with their life.

The poem’s speaker doesn’t have a name or palpable characteristics. The speaker is a mere voice. They’re a vehicle for Emily Dickinson to convey her beliefs on the effects of suffering. As the authorial context reveals, it’s possible to think of Dickinson as the speaker, but the reader doesn’t have to make Dickinson the speaker to fathom the poem. Keeping the speaker separate from Dickinson acknowledges the difference between Dickinson and her poetic personae, and it reinforces the poem’s detached view of pain. Like pronounced suffering, the speaker is stony and stoic.

The speaker’s tone is confident. They’re certain about what pain does to a person, and their sureness leads them to speak in declarations. Thus, the speaker declares, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes” (Line 1). The statement is a juxtaposition, contrasting the intensely personal feeling of trauma with the detachment that follows.

The dispassionate stoicism continues with a funereal image, “The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs” (Line 2). The vivid simile works with Dickinson’s nonstandard capitalization to turn nerves (a common noun) into Nerves (a proper noun). As the Nerves act ceremoniously, the speaker makes them grand or romantic. The Nerves possess pomp. As with nerves, Dickinson turns tombs (a common noun) into Tombs (a proper noun). The Tombs reinforce the magnificence of pain. Tombs are not common graves but elaborate vaults. The Tombs and Nerves advance the theme of The Dignity of Pain, making pain a stately, honorable experience.

The speaker pivots to the religious aspects of suffering by alluding to Jesus Christ. Using anthropomorphism and nonstandard capitalization, the speaker turns the heart into a proper noun and gives it the ability to speak like a human. The Heart wonders, “[W]as it He, that bore,” adding, “Yesterday, or Centuries before?” (Lines 3-4). Here, the pain is less dignified and more grandiose. The suffering causes the person to compare themselves with Christ—the imputed son of God—when they’re presumably not a godly figure but a regular human being. From another angle, Christ’s example gives the person comfort. If Christ could endure crucifixion hundreds of years ago, then the person can survive their current pain. The focus on the heart and Jesus brings out the theme of The Alienating Elements of Trauma. The person loses their sense of identity. They turn into a single organ and identify with a religious figure.

The tone becomes playful in Stanza 2, as the speaker presents the person in distress as a windup toy and a wooden puppet, stating, “The Feet, mechanical, go round - / A Wooden way” (Lines 5-6). The person remains alienated from their feelings. They’re unfeeling, yet they continue to move “Of Ground, or Air, or Ought” (Line 7). Though they’re numb from the pain, their life continues in different directions. “Regardless” (Line 8) of their emotionless state, the person grows into a “Quartz contentment, like a stone” (Line 9). The image and simile circle back to the theme of the dignity of pain. The person becomes a graceful, composed rock.

The speaker’s tone becomes dramatic when they declare, “This is the Hour of Lead” (Line 10). The theatrical statement represents the poem’s climax. The person is in the starkest period, and the lead spotlights the precarity, as lead is a metal used in things like ammunition. If the person survives—“outlive[s]” (Line 11)—their trauma, they’ll think of it as “Freezing persons, recollect the Snow” (Line 12). The image links to the theme of The Finite Quality of Suffering. As with enduring freezing weather, pain carries definable boundaries. In other words, pain doesn’t last for infinity: A person will either die from their pain or live. Either way, there will be a resolution.

The speaker describes the process of confronting pain: “First - Chill - then Stupor - then the letting go” (Line 13). The ambiguity of “letting go” (Line 13) makes the resolution unclear. The pain could end because the person lets go of life and dies. Conversely, the pain could end because the person undergoes the process of dealing with pain so that they can let go of it and carry on. The equivocal last line turns the poem into a riddle, leaving it up to the audience to interrupt the meaning of “letting go” (Line 13).