Pablo Neruda’s poem “Don’t Go Far Off” expresses the message that losing someone you truly love leads to emotional pain and suffering. Neruda demonstrates this through the use of word choice that creates a feeling of desperation, figurative language to produce the image of loneliness, and shifts reflecting his vulnerability.
Neruda starts his poem with the plea, “Don’t go far off, not even for a day” (1). His loved one leaving him for even a day can feel like forever to him, but not a good forever; a forever that is lonely and empty. This is also seen by the figurative language and word choice Neruda decides to use later on in that stanza. Neruda uses imagery and metaphor when he says “an empty station / when the trains are parked off somewhere …show more content…
Neruda starts off with “Don’t leave me, even for an hour” (5). As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, him starting off this way plays a role in the way he uses shifts to reflect how vulnerable he is now that his loved one is gone. Notice how in the first stanza he didn’t want her to leave for a day, now he doesn’t want her to leave for an hour. This is beginning to show how as we read further into the poem, he gets weaker. Neruda also uses certain words such as: “anguish” (6), “choking” (8), and “lost” (8) to show that his pain is getting more intense. He went from feeling empty in the first stanza, to feeling as if something was physically choking his heart. Neruda uses personification when he says, “smoke that roams looking for a home will drift/ into me, choking my lost heart” (7-8). Smoke can not choke a heart. We all know that choking is a human action, so there’s no way that smoke, a non human, is able to choke someone or something. Also, in order to be choked, one needs a neck and we know that a heart doesn’t have a neck, therefore Neruda is giving a non human a human characteristic. He uses these personifications in order to show how hurt he is now that his loved one is …show more content…
He continued by saying “because in that moment you’ll have gone so far/ I’ll wander mazily over all the earth” (12-13). We can see that this is not literal, but what Neruda was implying was that if she left him she’ll be long gone probably living a happy life, and he’ll be left alone and confused. The words “wander” (13) and “mazily” (13) add onto the image of confusion in the poem. Wander is just moving, but it differs in the sense that the person doing the moving is moving aimlessly. This ties back to the poem because the speaker feels that he has no purpose and no sense of direction hence the wandering. Mazily only serves to strengthen the image of confusion. It’s used to describe the word wander, and it especially helps since mazily can also be defined as confused. These two words together serve to create the image of the speaker being delusional tying it back to what I said originally of him being left alone and confused. He ends the stanza with “Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?” (14). In the beginning of the poem Neruda felt empty, towards the middle he felt as if something was choking his heart, and in the end he felt like dying. This shows that as time goes on, the feeling gets more
Neruda starts his poem with the plea, “Don’t go far off, not even for a day” (1). His loved one leaving him for even a day can feel like forever to him, but not a good forever; a forever that is lonely and empty. This is also seen by the figurative language and word choice Neruda decides to use later on in that stanza. Neruda uses imagery and metaphor when he says “an empty station / when the trains are parked off somewhere …show more content…
Neruda starts off with “Don’t leave me, even for an hour” (5). As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, him starting off this way plays a role in the way he uses shifts to reflect how vulnerable he is now that his loved one is gone. Notice how in the first stanza he didn’t want her to leave for a day, now he doesn’t want her to leave for an hour. This is beginning to show how as we read further into the poem, he gets weaker. Neruda also uses certain words such as: “anguish” (6), “choking” (8), and “lost” (8) to show that his pain is getting more intense. He went from feeling empty in the first stanza, to feeling as if something was physically choking his heart. Neruda uses personification when he says, “smoke that roams looking for a home will drift/ into me, choking my lost heart” (7-8). Smoke can not choke a heart. We all know that choking is a human action, so there’s no way that smoke, a non human, is able to choke someone or something. Also, in order to be choked, one needs a neck and we know that a heart doesn’t have a neck, therefore Neruda is giving a non human a human characteristic. He uses these personifications in order to show how hurt he is now that his loved one is …show more content…
He continued by saying “because in that moment you’ll have gone so far/ I’ll wander mazily over all the earth” (12-13). We can see that this is not literal, but what Neruda was implying was that if she left him she’ll be long gone probably living a happy life, and he’ll be left alone and confused. The words “wander” (13) and “mazily” (13) add onto the image of confusion in the poem. Wander is just moving, but it differs in the sense that the person doing the moving is moving aimlessly. This ties back to the poem because the speaker feels that he has no purpose and no sense of direction hence the wandering. Mazily only serves to strengthen the image of confusion. It’s used to describe the word wander, and it especially helps since mazily can also be defined as confused. These two words together serve to create the image of the speaker being delusional tying it back to what I said originally of him being left alone and confused. He ends the stanza with “Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?” (14). In the beginning of the poem Neruda felt empty, towards the middle he felt as if something was choking his heart, and in the end he felt like dying. This shows that as time goes on, the feeling gets more