18 pages • 36 minutes read
The Bear
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Themes
Birth, Death, and Rebirth
The poem implies that it is set in the Arctic circle where there is tundra, wolf, and the blubber of animals, such as seals. Inuit mythology poses a world in which the animals people hunt willingly sacrifice themselves for food but continue on through the restorative cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Bears hold special significance as a symbol of death and rebirth because of their patterns of hibernation. Bears eat during the summer and fall, then retire to dens during the winter where they sleep. They lose most of their fat reserves and emerge hungry and thin but alive in the spring to continue with the cycle. This pattern mimics death and rebirth.
The hunter’s pursuit of the bear could represent an allegory of the hunter’s pursuit of immortality, spirituality, and the ability to transcend death. When the hunter dreams about the bear in spring, he may be dreaming about the reincarnation of the bear he has just killed. Metaphorically, he becomes not just a physical bear, but the spirit of the bear and part of the spiritual essence of the Arctic.
Transcendence
The poem is riddled with juxtapositions and paradoxes. The hunter must live by killing. Inuit respect the bear but consume it. The bear sacrifices itself for humans but forces them to chase it first. The poet presents the act of hunting as an experience of transcendence in which the hunter overcomes his limited human consciousness to imagine what it is like to become a bear while the bear transcends his body to enter the spirit world. Based on the description below it is clear the bear is not conscious of what is happening to it. It is trying to survive.
splattering it out no matter which way I lurch,
no matter which parabola of bear-transcendence,
which dance of solitude I attempt,
which gravity-clutched leap,
which trudge, which groan. (Lines 59-63)
After this corporeal “dance of solitude” (Line 61) the bear falls, but in the next line it thinks “I must rise up / and dance. And I lie still” (Lines 76-77).
The “I” in the first statement is the spirit. The “I” that stays on the ground is the body. The bear must go through the agony of its bodily death to become the spirit that can rise up and dance.
Human and Animal Consciousness and the Creative Process
Some have read “The Bear” as an allegory for writing poetry itself, especially in light of the last line that equates the blood of the bear to “that poetry by which I lived” (Line 93). Others have suggested it is an allegory for the mind entering the body, which leads to poetry. Kinnell says he agrees with these interpretations, though he didn’t consciously intend them when he wrote the poem.
The not knowing is part of the point of poetry. Mimicking the activity of a hunter who either chooses not to use a gun or who does not have access to a gun allows the poet to imagine life as a person who lives closer to the land, uses animal parts to capture another animal, and survives off the uncooked meat of the animal. The hunter is clearly a human being able to make tools, make plans, and outwit the bear, but the hunter acts more like an Arctic animal than some more modern counterparts might. He pursues not only the animal but the spirit of the arctic itself.
When he enters into the bear’s body, he has dreams about being the bear he has just killed. This is an act of transcendence, not because it liberates him from the limits of the body but because it liberates him from the consciousness of being only a human being. He takes on a figure characterized by his large and lumbering body.
The fact that the poem ends with a question—“wandering: wondering / what, anyway, / was that sticky infusion, that rank flavor of blood, that poetry, by which I lived?” (Lines 91-93)—makes clear that the speaker does not fully understand his experience and may not fully understand the essence of life itself let alone the creative process.
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By Galway Kinnell
