If You Forget Me

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“If You Forget Me” by Pablo Neruda is a love poem that expresses one’s powerful love for another and how that love is effected by the other’s decisions or actions. The main theme behind Neruda’s poem is love and the natural devotion it embarks upon one. He expresses very intense emotions towards his beloved, implying his love is so passionate and caring, he cannot deny his love’s wishes. This theme is first developed when the narrator expresses how everything in its entirety naturally carries him to her. Next, he explains that if his love chooses to forget him he will have already forgotten her, for his roots are attached to her heart. It ends with the proclamation that if she shares love towards him, he love will forever be hers. Metaphors are used throughout the poem. Land and roots are examples that are used. “To leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots” (Literature, 10th edition, 809) implies that he is perhaps a tree rooted at shore, and must use the elements of the land to survive. This is a comparison to his love’s heart and how he must love and he devote himself to her in order for him to survive. By comparing himself to something in nature, it also brings emphasis on the idea that his love is a natural force. Like in nature, when specie’s dependence on something needed to survive is suddenly gone, the species must find something else to survive on or it will die. If she suddenly stops providing him her love, he must let go of her so that he can carry on. In the second stanza, Pablo Neruda first introduces the idea that everything that exists in the world is a force of nature guiding him to his beloved. Here he invites the use of imagery into the poem. “The crystal moon, at the red branch” and “the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log” (Literature, 10th edition, 809) are examples that Pablo Neruda uses. This use of imagery
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