Hate
Hate - meaning Summary
Love Turned to Violence
Sandburg's 'Hate' compresses a violent paradox: a man kills someone he once loved and even weeps, suggesting regret cannot erase an instantaneous act of hatred born from years of affection. The poem frames the murder as "a shot in one second of hate out of ten years of love," then shifts to surreal natural images—red sun, tumbling moon—conveying disorientation and psychological fracture. It confronts the fragile boundary between devotion and destructive impulse.
Read Complete AnalysesONE man killed another. The saying between them had been 'I'd give you the shirt off my back.' The killer wept over the dead. The dead if he looks back knows the killer was sorry. It was a shot in one second of hate out of ten years of love. Why is the sun a red ball in the six o'clock mist? Why is the moon a tumbling chimney?... tumbling ... tumbling ... 'I'd give you the shirt off my back' ... And I'll kill you if my head goes wrong.
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