Walking Around by Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda was able to explain the horrors of materialism, suburban living and the suffocating confines of the corporate world in his surreal poem, Walking Around. The first time I read it, I thought "hey it's about a man sick of life in general and shit he's walking around town to ponder" but turns out, it was something a bit more existential. 

Pablo Neruda symbolised tailor shops and movie houses as a way for people to have fake appearances for something they are not. He was also able to point out that people were only after artificial matters nowadays thus we rely on it too much. Additionally, according to Neruda, politics and religion should be eliminated because it only causes greed and conflicts. Also, the corporate world, a matter Neruda (or at least the persona) feels strongly against, is highlighted by the lines "I don’t want to go on as a root and a tomb, alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses, half frozen, dying of grief". Working in an office means you are always under somebody, working so hard but having the work credited for the higher people in the end. Working in an office signifies the death of being able to pursue your dreams, impossibility for intellectual growth to flourish since one is set out to focus on one specific job to accomplish. Such a waste of talent. The persona of the poem is frustrated because he wants to change how things work but higher things are working for such a system to continue. 

Even before encountering this poem for class, I have decided that I would not like to work in an office for a living. I was able to see the effects of the corporate world to my parents, their friends, family members and even from the movies. I am a part of a younger generation with an idea of traveling, sleeping 'til the afternoon for less work hours, and being your own boss, as an ideal career in life. 

But really, no one is sure of the future anyway. What if, like all the other dreamers who had high hopes for their careers but failed to make it happen, I would be forced to work in an office as well?

The city, full of paradoxical beginnings and endings, is a hell where no one can completely escape out of in Neruda's opinion. It's awfully depressing of how true this situation is. We live on, encountering bones and decaying into bones ourselves, passing by office buildings and clothes lines. We are all trapped in the system.