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Stephen Crane

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said: "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter--bitter," he answered;
"But i like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."

Oh Stephen, what a creep you are. This poem struck me a lot. I like this poem because it is very simple, but behind that simpleness there is a lot of complexity. This poem is one giant metaphor, and Crane uses this metaphor to explain how in all of us there is some type of bestial creature. In this poem I imagine this being seen in a dream, in Crane's dream and the reason why I say that is because the way that the passage is written is story-like. The way that Crane spaces out the passage and the way that he breaks up the lines with the commas puts emphasis on certain words or parts of the poem. For instance when Crane separates line 4 into two different lines it puts a lot of emphasis on line 5, which states that the heart that the creature has in his hands is being eaten by that creature. It allows the reader to see what parts that Crane holds important and what he wants the reader to emphasize. The creature is the creature inside and i see it from the point of view of Freud and that this is a dream or something like it and the creature that is being seen is just a projection of the dreamer, therefore the creature is a part of the person in the poem. If the creature is a part of the person then he is the person and so the person is eating his own heart as a creature and stating that it is bitter, it is his own heart, and he likes it. I see this as the evil in all of us, and the person is seeing himself as this creature and he is eating his own bitter heart, but he likes it, he likes the badness that is within himself. He likes his own evil.