About the Poet: Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) was a Chilean poet, diplomat and politician.

  • "Pablo Neruda" was his pen name, which later became his legal name. His real name was Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto.
  • He took the name from the Czech poet Jan Neruda.
  • He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.
  • He was recognised as a poet while still a teenager, and wrote surrealist poems, historical epics, political poems, a prose autobiography and love poems such as Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924).

The translator. The poem was translated from Spanish into English by Alastair Reid, a Scottish poet, prose writer and translator who lived in Spain, France, Switzerland, the USA and South America and published over 40 books.

[Exam Tip] — Neruda is Chilean; the Nobel year is 1971. Do not confuse him with Yeats (Irish, 1923).

Summary

The poem follows a human foot from childhood to death. The foot stands for the whole human being.

1. The child's dream. The child's foot does not yet know it is a foot. It wants to be a butterfly (to fly) or an apple (to be a fruit on a branch) - symbols of freedom and beauty.

2. Reality teaches. In time, stones, bits of glass, streets, ladders and rough paths teach the foot that it cannot fly or become a fruit. The foot is defeated, falls in the battle, and becomes a prisoner condemned to live in a shoe.

3. Life in the dark. Inside the shoe, cut off from its fellow, the foot learns the world "like a blind man".

4. Physical change. The soft nails, like quartz, become hard and opaque, hard as horn. The tiny, petaled toes become bunched and misshapen, like eyeless reptiles with triangular heads, like worms. Later they grow callused, covered with the "faint volcanoes of death" - a coarsening hard to accept.

5. Endless toil. Yet this "blind thing" walks without respite, hour after hour - man's and woman's feet, up and down, through fields, mines, markets and ministries - scarcely resting even for love or sleep, until the whole man chooses to stop.

6. Death. Then the foot goes underground, into darkness, unaware. It never knew it had ceased to be a foot - or whether it was being buried so that it could fly, or become an apple. The dream of childhood returns at the end.

Central Idea

  • The poem contrasts the colourful dreams of childhood with the harsh, dull reality of adult life.
  • Society and circumstances crush childhood dreams and force people into rigid moulds - the shoe.
  • Yet the poem is also a salute to the ordinary person, who keeps working without rest, braving all odds, till death.
  • The ending brings a note of hope or mystery: in death the foot may be set free to fly or become an apple again - perhaps like a seed buried in the earth that grows into a tree.

The title. "To the Foot from its Child" suggests that the child still living inside every adult speaks to the tired, grown-up foot - reminding it of the dreams it once had.

[Exam Tip] — A 3-mark question in 2025 asked what changes the foot undergoes after being condemned to live in a shoe. Mention: learns the world like a blind man; soft nails become hard as horn; petaled toes become like eyeless reptiles and worms; callused, with the "faint volcanoes of death".