The Theme Of Death In A Dog Has Died By Pablo Neruda

It is often said that as a human, we die two deaths. One when our heart stops beating, and another one when our name is uttered for the final time. One is your death as a human, and the other is your death as a distinct human. It can be said though, that in that time between deaths, it’s better to be remembered by the positive things you had said and done, rather than the negative. People want to be remembered not by their failures and the bridges they burned, but by their successes and the bonds they made. Health is what prevents our first death, but the bonds we made prevent our second. Bonds are not exclusive to people, though. In Pablo Neruda’s poem A Dog Has Died, he discusses the death of a companion, and the special relationship held between a pet and its owner, and how it goes beyond that bond which can be made between people.
The few comparisons a la similes and metaphors that he does make in this poem are used to further this point. He starts off describing his dog as “the friendship of a star, aloof,” (19). The speaker compares the dog to the sun due to the stark similarities in their behavior. The star plays a generally distant role in the lives of, say, their planets, like Earth. From Earth’s point of view, the sun is pretty distant and passive. It makes things bright and hot, and that’s all it seems to do. The dog is similar in this way, as it’s friendship with the narrator is similar to that of a star and its planet. The dog is there, and it provides support and help to the speaker, but it is relatively passive. It doesn’t do the classic dog behaviors, like the example the speaker provides of rubbing up against his