In the time period when Emily Dickinson lived, the soul was a large part of people’s lives. The soul is important in the Christian faith, and during Dickinson’s lifetime, there was a revival of Christianity. As a Christian, Dickinson recognized that souls signified people or people’s lives. However, it seems that her meaning in this poem goes deeper than that: to the innermost character of a person. In “The Soul unto itself”, Emily Dickinson expresses the soul’s unique qualities through the use of metaphor and syntax in order to portray the dichotomy of the human soul, which she describes as being both an enemy and a friend. The author uses several metaphors to dictate what the soul is to itself. According to Dickinson, the soul “is an imperial