The Heart asks Pleasure----first, Emily Dickinson

THE HEART asks pleasure first,
And then, excuse from pain;
And then, those little anodynes
That deaden suffering;
And then, to go to sleep;	5
And then, if it should be
The will of its Inquisitor,
The liberty to die.

This poem by Dickinson can be read in two ways; both a literal way and a much more intellectual way. In the first line Dickinson intentionally capitalizes the words Heart and Pleasure to give the words life in the poem. In the second line, she also capitalizes Pain to emphasize the importance of the emotions of the Heart. Dickinson capitalizes Anodynes in the third line to show how the Heart relies on these pain relievers to remove its suffering. This is satirical to the society today because this represents how people often times will turn to other things to relieve personal sufferings in their life. The punctuated pauses used throughout the poem are there to bring attention to the shifts in time from one emotion to the other, and the effect that each one has on the Heart. Dickinson wrote this poem using the central character, the Heart, to represent a person and how people will do anything they can to keep from feeling pain; even if it does mean death.