Neruda's "Walking Around"

BLOG PROMPT: What view of the city emerges from Pablo Neruda’s “Walking Around”?

     In “Walking Around” Pablo Neruda portrays the city as a destructive and demoralizing place. Neruda focuses on the city’s destructive power where the city symbolizes society and its inherent inequities. This power works to prevent the formation of an individualized identity because individuality is replaced by the inequities that come from a society fueled by materiality. Neruda “was an advocate for social justice and a leading cultural figure on the Communist left” his desire for social justice is reflected in his critical examination of city life and its inherent inequities (1421).

     The poem opens by Neruda expressing his desire for escape from city life, but realizing that the city itself has worked into his own self-identity; “I want nothing but the repose either of stones or of wool, I want to see no more establishments…nor merchandise…It happens that I am tired of my feet and my nails and my hair and my shadow. It happens that I am tired of being a man” (1423).  As Chile’s national poet Neruda was a representative of the people, and he expressed a longing to eradicate societal inequities all the while realizing his impuissant ability to do so; “It would be beautiful to go through the streets with a green knife shouting until I died of cold. I do not want to go on being a root in the dark, hesitating, stretched out, shivering with dreams downwards, in the wet tripe of the earth, soaking it up and thinking, eating every day” (1424).

    Although Neruda desires change he feels powerless under the oppressive weight of the city. Neruda expresses the fear and realization that because he is part of society he is also part of its system of inequities regardless of his desire for social justice; “I do not want to be the inheritor of so many misfortunes, I do not want to continue as a root and as a tomb…” (1424). Neruda concludes with his realization that he is a powerless part of society and sadly accepts his fate and his powerlessness; “I stride along with calm, with eyes, with shoes, with fury, with forgetfulness, I pass, I cross offices and stores full of orthopedic appliances, and courtyards hung with clothes on wires, underpants, towels and shirts which weep slow dirty tears” (1424).     

Works Cited

"Pablo Neruda." 1650 to the Present. Ed. Martin Puchner. Shorter 3rd ed. New York: Norton, 2013. 1421-1422. Print. Vol. 2 of The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 2 vols.

 

Neruda, Pablo. “Walking Around.” Trans. W.S. Merwin. 1650 to the Present. Ed. Martin Puchner. Shorter 3rd ed. New York: Norton, 2013. 1423-1424. Print. Vol. 2 of The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 2 vols.