Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Anne Sexton’s "Bestiary U.S.A.: Hog" presents a stark and vivid portrayal of the hog, not merely as an animal, but as a symbol of the inexorable movement toward death—a recurring theme in Sexton's work. Through her deft use of imagery and metaphor, Sexton examines the parallels between the life of a hog and the human experience, particularly the quiet, inevitable march toward mortality.

The poem opens with a description that is both affectionate and unsettling: "Oh you brown bacon machine, / how sweet you lie, / gaining a pound and a half a day." The hog is reduced to its utility, a "bacon machine," emphasizing its fate as a commodity meant for consumption. This dehumanization—turning the hog into a mere "machine"—reflects society's broader tendency to overlook the sentience of animals raised for slaughter, focusing instead on their role as producers of food. Yet, the phrase "how sweet you lie" suggests a kind of innocence or simplicity in the hog’s existence, an unawareness of its impending doom.

Sexton continues to juxtapose this innocence with grotesque imagery: "you rolled-up pair of socks, / you dog's nightmare, / your snout pushed in / but leaking out the ears." The hog is depicted as both ridiculous and pitiable, with its physical form described in a way that highlights its helplessness and absurdity. The comparison to "a rolled-up pair of socks" trivializes the hog, reducing it to something mundane and insignificant, while "leaking out the ears" evokes a sense of decay or malfunction, a body that is failing or broken.

The poem then shifts from the external description of the hog to a more introspective tone as the speaker relates the animal’s experience to her own: "I lie in my bed at night / in the closet of my mind / and count hogs in a pen." Here, the speaker draws a direct parallel between the hogs and herself, suggesting that both are confined—physically, in the case of the hogs, and mentally or emotionally, in the case of the speaker. The "closet of my mind" implies a space of repression or hidden fears, where the speaker is confronted with the inevitability of death.

The enumeration of the hogs—"brown, spotted, white, pink, black"—emphasizes the diversity of life, yet despite their differences, all are "moving on the shuttle toward death." This line captures the fatalistic progression of life, where every living being, regardless of its unique attributes, is inevitably drawn toward the same end. The imagery of the "shuttle" suggests a mechanized, assembly-line process, further reinforcing the idea of life as a production line that ultimately leads to death.

In the final lines, Sexton completes the analogy between the hogs and the speaker’s own experience: "just as my mind moves over / for its own little death." The "little death" here can be interpreted as a reference to sleep, often metaphorically linked to death, or it could signify moments of psychological or emotional surrender—small instances where the mind succumbs to despair or resignation. The use of "little" minimizes the act of dying, suggesting that death, like sleep, is an ordinary part of life, yet its repetition underscores its omnipresence and inevitability.

Through "Bestiary U.S.A.: Hog," Sexton invites readers to reflect on the interconnectedness of all life and death, the ways in which living beings are both unique and yet uniformly bound by the same fate. The poem's exploration of the hog as a symbol of mortality highlights Sexton's preoccupation with the passage of time and the inevitability of death, themes that pervade much of her work. In this poem, the hog serves as a mirror, reflecting the speaker's own anxieties and the universal human condition, making the mundane life of a farm animal a profound meditation on life’s transient nature.

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