Walking Around
It so happens I am sick of being a man.
And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie
houses
dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.
The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse
sobs.
The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.
It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man.
Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.
It would be great
to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.
I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.
I don't want so much misery.
I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.
That's why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the
night.
And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist
houses,
into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,
and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.
There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines
hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors
that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical
cords.
I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,
my rage, forgetting everything,
I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic
shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling.
Literary Analysis
This literary analysis was generated with AI and may contain interpretive differences. Provide your analysis in the comments section.
Summary
In Walking Around, the poem's restless journey is less a walk than a forceful rejection of ordinary human life. The man who speaks moves through shops, streets, hospitals, and offices, but each place feels contaminated by boredom, disgust, or injury. He is not simply tired in a casual sense; he is overwhelmed by the bodily fact of existence, by routine, by work, by social roles, and even by his own physical self. The opening declaration of being "sick of being a man" establishes a speaker who feels estranged from civilization and from his own humanity.
The poem moves between two kinds of violence. On one side is the speaker's fantasy of escape: he longs to be still, rootlike, almost nonhuman, and he imagines impossible or shocking acts of rebellion. On the other side is the suffocating violence of modern life itself, where Monday, offices, shops, hospitals, and household objects all seem diseased or accusatory. Neruda builds the poem toward a paradox: the speaker wants to escape social existence, yet he cannot stop walking through it. The result is a powerful tension between nihilistic disgust and fierce, almost comic imagination, as if language itself is the only way to resist a world that feels unbearable.
Theme
- Alienation from modern life - The poem presents everyday urban spaces as hostile and dehumanizing, making the speaker feel cut off from ordinary social existence.
- Rejection of the body - The speaker repeatedly expresses disgust with his own physical features, suggesting a deep conflict between mind, body, and identity.
- Modern routine as oppression - Monday, offices, shops, and hospitals become symbols of a system that traps the speaker in repetitive, exhausting existence.
- Desire for escape - The wish to become still, rootlike, or tomb-like reveals a longing to leave behind consciousness, motion, and responsibility.
- Violence as fantasy and protest - The shocking imagined acts are less literal than expressive of inner revolt, showing how frustration turns into aggressive imagery.
- Collapse of the ordinary into the grotesque - Everyday objects and places are transformed into images of decay, shame, and bodily unease, enlarging the poem's sense of horror.
Literary Devices
- Free verse - The loose, unrhymed form matches the poem's roaming movement and its refusal of order, just as the speaker resists social regularity.
- Anaphora - Repeated phrases such as "It so happens" and "I don't want" create a pounding, insistent rhythm that mirrors obsession and refusal.
- Vivid imagery - The poem fills common spaces with startling sensory details, turning familiar settings into scenes of disgust and anxiety.
- Hyperbole - The speaker's extreme statements heighten emotional intensity and make his alienation feel total rather than mild.
- Personification - Monday is given actions and hostility, transforming time itself into an enemy of the speaker.
- Metaphor - The comparison of the self to roots, tombs, and warehouses turns inner despair into concrete physical forms.
- Dark humor - The poem's exaggerated, bizarre images create a comic edge even as they express real anguish, preventing the despair from becoming flat.
- Cataloguing - Long lists of objects and places accumulate pressure, making the world feel crowded, oppressive, and impossible to escape.
Symbolism
- Monday - The workweek becomes a symbol of routine, obligation, and the crushing return of social life.
- Shops and stores - These places suggest consumption, commerce, and the impersonal machinery of modern existence.
- Root - The image of being a root symbolizes passive survival, buried life, and a desire to withdraw from consciousness.
- Tomb - The tomb represents stillness, death-like escape, and the speaker's wish to end awareness.
- Green knife - This image can suggest a fantasy of rebellion and sudden rupture against a world the speaker cannot tolerate.
- Mirrors - Mirrors symbolize self-confrontation, shame, and the painful act of seeing one's own identity reflected back.
- Umbrellas - The repeated umbrellas may stand for defensive habits, social cover, or the need to shield oneself from emotional weather.
- Washing on the line - The hanging clothes can symbolize exposed ordinary life, with the "dirty tears" suggesting that domestic routine itself is stained by sorrow.
Tone
Neruda's tone is fierce, raw, and deliberately unsettling, mixing disgust with bursts of darkly inventive defiance. Beneath the spoken fury lies a sense of isolation so intense that even ordinary things seem contaminated. For the reader, the mood is oppressive and surreal: familiar city life appears twisted into a hostile landscape, yet the poem's energy also carries a strange vitality, as if anger itself were the last remaining sign of life.
Historical Context
Pablo Neruda wrote within the broad currents of twentieth-century modern poetry, where free verse, surreal imagery, and urban alienation became important tools for expressing psychological and social crisis. His work often combines intimate emotion with public life, and this poem reflects that tendency by turning everyday city experience into something visceral and almost nightmarish.
The poem also belongs to a literary climate shaped by modern industrial society, bureaucratic routine, and the sense that daily life can estrange people from themselves. Its crowded city images, bodily metaphors, and dreamlike leaps align it with surrealist and late-modernist writing, even as its emotional force remains distinctly Neruda's own.
Similar Poems
- The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - T. S. Eliot
- A Supermarket in California - Allen Ginsberg
- Luncheon on the Grass - Frank O'Hara
- The Waste Land - T. S. Eliot
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