The Bear

“The Bear” is focused on the gruesome facts of the bear’s death and the corporality of his body as it dies as well as the gruesome things the hunter must do to survive. The speaker explores the darker aspects of living: how it comes at the expense of other animals and how it involves doing things that might seem unsavory to a more modern, urbanized audience. By focusing on these otherwise “taboo” subjects, the poem reawakens readers to the truth about human nature and our relationship with the animal world. Both humans and animals have similar bodies, and those bodies are fragile and sometimes unpleasant. Maintaining those bodies sometimes requires doing what today might seem unthinkable, like eating a turd to survive. In more primitive cultures, gathering and consuming enough food to survive takes more prominence than in modern society. In these cultures, people live with greater awareness of their bodies and the reality of what their bodies are meant to do.