The Narrator of Linda Hogans Porcupine - Essay Example

The Pricking of Perception in Linda Hogan's Essay "Porcupine" How often do people notice the small creatures living all around them in our busy modern lives The narrator of Linda Hogan's essay "Porcupine" focuses her attention on a particular porcupine that has been living close to the houses in which she lives. The human neighbor reminisces about the various times she has seen the porcupine and seems to feel genuine regret upon finding the animal dead. The narrator's logic goes through a process from observation to empathy and identification and then, finally, onto contemplation. Through the process of identifying with the porcupine, the narrator is able to gain perspective about her own life and eventual death, realizing that she, too, is merely part of a cyclic process.
It is ironic that the narrator states that "This is not the porcupine of poems", for it is instead the porcupine of a contemplative essay. But observations always begin with the external, just as the narrator notes, "It is not the sleek young porcupine (nor) one of the fast ones this one is torn and lame She wears her history" This animal, while not necessarily ancient, has had many years of experience with life and has been somewhat battered by it. While these are fairly obvious details about the porcupine, this strong focus of attention on them implies a much deeper level of identification by the narrator. The narrator, too, has had enough experiences of life to recognize the signs of it in another; she too is not the youth she was, yet still has a "light in her."
While the narrator has largely adhered to observable data, the empathy now established allows her to take more poetic license in her imagination as she looks to the inner life of this animal. She merges these in such instances as "She has grown and walks and lives and continues, red blood pulsing through her heart and arteries, the red muscle lying over and upon itself, the organs so perfect inside" in both describing the physical inner world of the porcupine and imagining it in its working form. With this internal observation, the animal becomes less a porcupine and more an equal living creature existing on the same plane as the narrator. Instead of human and porcupine, they are both organic beings. After projecting a fantasized vision of the animal's internal functions, it becomes easier to accept the narrator's projections of the animal's routines and adventures when out of sight, such as on the road or fences. The animal, while existing in reality, has already half-crossed into the narrator's imagination.
Thus, when the narrator discovers the dead porcupine, she has the human choice of " honoring that dark life I've seen (through remembrance) or walking away (i.e. ignoring the death)". She offers the animal ceremonial burial flowers and takes several quills as keepsakes much as she might have done following the death of a human friend. The narrator has been touched by the porcupine's mortality, which reminds her of her own. The event has left her psyche so sensitive that the next day, when the narrator witnesses the insect scavengers that have fed upon the body, she is not especially horrified by the macabre and grotesque process. Instead, her mind accelerates the process she is witnessing, seeing the maggot larvae begin to metamorphose in front of her eyes, while at the same time seeing ants feed on this new life in turn, reminding her of the cyclical nature of the living process.
The narrator's meditation is summed up in the last paragraph: "In that crossing over the porcupine lives on. In its transformation, life continues." This is an important revelation which is carried further through the narrator's identification with the event, which she summarizes in saying, "My life too, which stopped only for a small moment in history, in the great turning over of the world." The stopping can be interpreted as the moment of her death before being recycled into the process of life or that she has become reborn through this epiphany. The porcupine has pricked the narrator's bubble of isolation; yet the renewed knowledge of interconnection with the universe has proven a more potent consolation than the fear of death.
Works Cited
Hogan, Linda. "Porcupine." Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living
World. New York: Touchstone Books, 1995. Read More