Hunting Fathers
Hunting Fathers - meaning Summary
Legacy of Violent Belief
The poem critiques inherited stories that project human motives onto animals and gods. It describes a tradition in which ancestors interpreted predator and prey in terms of personal glory, divine right, and morally charged love. Those narratives shape human behavior, normalizing hunger for power, guilt, and anonymous wrongdoing. The speaker questions how such cultural myths remodel human desire and moral imagination, making violent appetites seem natural and inevitable.
Read Complete AnalysesOur hunting fathers told the story Of the sadness of the creatures, Pitied the limits and the lack Set in their finished features; Saw in the lion's intolerant look, Behind the quarry's dying glare, Love raging for, the personal glory That reason's gift would add, The liberal appetite and power, The rightness of a god. Who, nurtured in that fine tradition, Predicted the result, Guessed Love by nature suited to The intricate ways of guilt, That human ligaments could so His southern gestures modify And make it his mature ambition To think no thought but ours, To hunger, work illegally, And be anonymous?
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