"The Bear" Poem by Galway Kinnell

In The Bear, the speaker of the poem seems to be a professional hunter, "and put down my nose/and know/the chilly, enduring odor of bear." Right away in the first stanza we know this guy is up to something and knows how to get it. The hunter utilizes the word, "lung-colored" to refer to the bear's breath. It describes the bear's breath having some type of odor making this bear real, more believable.

It is evident that Galway Kinnell had some type of knowledge in the techniques of hunting. The second stanza (#2) provides us (the readers) with details of the hunter's preparations to kill this bear, "I take a wolf's rib and whittle/it sharp at both ends/and coil it up." The speaker acts as a professional hunter. He utilizes knives (primitive) as weapons instead of a gun, "...forward with bear-knives in my fists." The weapon to kill the bear defines the relationship between hunter and prey. A gun would violate their bond while the preparation of the "wolf's rib" carved from bone and hidden in fat, "whittle/it sharp.../and coil it up/and freeze it in blubber..." is part of the same world they share.

In the third stanza (#2), the lines, "At the cut, gashed resting places/I stop and rest," the hunter is going to rest at a place that is cut like the bear. Again, we see a relationship that exists between the hunter and the bear. The hunter seems to have a certain bond with the bear, "I stop and rest/at the crawl-marks/where he lay out on his belly," he visits the same places where the bear wanders about. The hunter even crawls like the bear, "I lie out/dragging myself forward...," he's becoming the bear. In the first stanza (#3), he begins to starve and drinks the bear's blood like an animal. The longer he hunts the bear, living by the end "on bear blood alone," the more he assumes the bear's identity.

Then, in the third stanza (#4), he cuts the bear open, climbs in, eats and drinks like a savage animal that has been starving for days. He does what he came to do, hunt for food. He doesn't just kill the bear for sport and fun, but hunts for survival. Finally, in #5 and #6, the hunter becomes the bear in a dream that he has, "stabbed twice from within/splattering a trail behind me." It seems as if the hunter and the bear have become one in the dream. There seems to be a conflict between the dream and the hunter's reality. The hunter shares the bear's agony that he produced, "to digest the blood as it leaked in," dying slowly as the bear did.

At the end, as he awakens, he sees another bear, "...under old snow the dam bear/lies, licking," it seems as if the hunter and the bear have come back to life. Since the first thing the hunter sees is another bear, it's almost like an incarnation of the bear. Also, after the hunter wakes up from his bear-dream, he seems to be an incarnation of half-man and half-bear. The hunting and killing of the bear has changed him immensely. Moreover, the hunter seems to be not very happy with his life situation, "was that sticky infusion, that rank flavor of blood, that poetry, by which/I lived?" He questions his life, his way of living because it doesn't change, it stays the same. He gets hungry---he hunts---he kills---he eats and starts all over again.

After reading this poem, I felt as if I had just watched a movie giving a set of instructions on how to hunt a bear. It also reminded me of the title of a book I read in high school ( too long ago), To Kill a Mockingbird. I don't remember what the book is about, but it reminds me of the title. Maybe we should name this poem, To Kill a Bear, of course that's only the title because there's still a lot more going on than what the title suggests,

especially in the hunter's dream.