An Exploration of Themes in Javier Peñalosa's 'The Crane' Poem

This essay provides an analysis of Javier Peñalosa’s poem “The Crane,” focusing on its exploration of empathy and the human response to suffering. The persona's experience with a dying bird serves as a catalyst for introspection, revealing themes of guilt, remorse, and the complex relationship between humans and other living beings. The analysis highlights Peñalosa's use of imagery, simile, repetition, enjambment, and personification to create a tone that is both remorseful and sad. The essay explores how the poem prompts readers to reconsider their attitudes toward love, hatred, and compassion, while also questioning the morality of ending suffering.

Javier Peñalosa’s poem “The Crane”, is a captivating and thought provoking piece of art that
talks about empathy and the power of human emotions over the suffering of both man and other
creation. The poem, using the life of a bird appeals to the mysterious and the sacred nature of life
and living. Throughout the poem, the persona expresses how he got overwhelmed by the
struggles of a dying bird. He makes a parallel comparison of the bird’s helps situation to what
many may be going through while trying to find purpose in life. The event happens to be
traumatizing to the persona for he happens to have recurrent visions of the bird that he killed
many years ago. The persona creates intimacy, fear and outright malice in the narration which
makes the reader to reevaluate their attitude about love and hatred. The persona’s desire to have
another opportunity to crash the bird’s skull makes the reader wonder whether he was indeed
remorseful of his heinous past. “…But I’m waiting for it to fall so I can draw close again, the oar
clutched in my hands”
There is an extensive use of imagery and figures of speech throughout the poem. There is a
clever use of similes, which essentially is the comparison of one thing with another thing of a
different kind (Delgado & Valdez, 2018). Similes are mainly used to make a description more
emphatic or vivid. For instance, the persona describes the feeble state of the bird as having its
wings broken, and its long, thin neck, “as graceful as the reeds”. By comparing the bird’s long
neck to reeds, he makes the reader to create a visual image of how emaciated the bird was and
probably death could relieve it of pain. Also, when the persona finally kills the bird, he uses
imagery to show us how the bird died with little resistance. The bird did not make a single
movement or sound. “It moved that leg of river grasses once or twice”. A leg of river grasses is a
term to refer back to the reed like state of the bird’s legs. There is also an element of repetition
that makes the poem both memorable and appealing to the reader. The persona constantly uses
the pronoun “I” in reference to the performer of the action. All the mystery inflicted on the bird
was apparently achieved by one person who is the speaker.
The poem employs enjambment which, essentially refers to thoughts or phrases that do not
conclude at the line break but instead overlaps into the next line (Barry, 2016). In the first stanza
of the poem, the persona concludes the last stanza by breaking and finishing up with the word
“flight”.
The tone of the poem is both remorseful and sad. Tone describes the general feeling in the poem
(White & Zoss, 2015). The persona gives a narration of how the life of the helpless bird was
ended by his oar. There is some sense of guilt in the persona’s voice. In the third stanza, we read
“..I felt a line of cold rise slowly to my neck, my hands shook, since they couldn’t weep”. He felt
shame on her face. There is also an element of personification in the poem when the persona
talks of compassion wearing a face of shame for the first time. “…and in my soul, compassion
wore shame’s face for the first time.”
The title of the message and the topic addressed is intriguing. How often do we stop to empathize
with other creatures or people that may be suffering in one way or another? Is it fair to end the
life of anyone or anything that may be suffering?

References
Barry, P. (2016). Reading poetry.
Delgado, E. B., & Valdez, R. M. (2018). Poiesis: Bringing Our Stories Into Being Through
Poetry.
The Crane. Translated by Robin Myers
White, A. M., & Zoss, M. (2015, July). “It's a Sad, Sad Story”: Teaching Emotional Connections
and Tone in Literature. In The Educational Forum (Vol. 79, No. 3, pp. 213-229).
Routledge.