The Portrait In The Rock By Pablo Neruda Analysis

Pablo Neruda is recognized as an influential poet, yet people cannot separate his poetry from his politics. Instead, critics analyze him for all he is: the sad, the happy, the political and the personal. Pablo Neruda’s thematic mood changes and progresses in perspective to his poems "Body of a Woman", "Ode to the Yellow Bird", and "The Portrait in the Rock" (in that chronological order). Neruda not only progresses from the first line to the last line of each individual poem, but as a poet over time. For Neruda’s readers to feel the shift in tone and the distinctive atmosphere, he uses intense imagery aided by figurative language and symbolism. Nature is the constant in Pablo Neruda’s poetry, but through the imagery, figurative language, and …show more content…
Although, in this particular case, Pablo Neruda uses his friend’s experience and converts it into intense poetry for a different purpose. Although it is still morose in tone and atmosphere, it is for a bigger purpose that Neruda wrote about his friend exiled from home, separated from all he loved. "The Portrait in the Rock" is deeper than "Body of a Woman" and "Ode to the Yellow Bird" considering it touches on a wider issue and unlike the preceding poems "Body of a Woman" and "Ode to the Yellow Bird", it speaks more forwardly about a real person and a fellow poet who was significant to Neruda. In "The Portrait in the Rock", Neruda speaks out against authority, describing that “When he opened it, the police took him, And they beat him up so much that he spat blood...”(“Portrait” 10-12). This image can be disturbing, in addition, it causes a distrust in authorities and an urgent need to end such violence. In this moment, it is understandable for Neruda to write this poem. He speaks out about death and confronts the issue of police brutality, the government forcing its ideals onto people and the oppression of those who refuse to conform. A difference in tone is an evident fearlessness derived from confronting the issue that correlated with his friend’s death. What was to stop the authorities that took his friend, to likewise harm Neruda himself? Neruda talks about a man he once knew and that “in his nose the wind was muffling the moaning of the persecuted”(“Portrait” 23-24) With this, I imagine the departed’s death as an act of martyrdom; a man who was forcefully removed from his home and only returned dead. By the end, he honoring Cesar Vallejo’s death and the chaos in the world which guides the poem into the