In this poem, ‘foot’ is used as a metaphor for ‘life’. Life refers to the life of a human being as seen from his infancy until his death. Pablo Neruda gives his view of ‘life’ and ‘death’ in this poem. The poem does not begin with the beginning of life in the womb of its mother but from the time after it has taken birth on the earth. The poem covers the period of its infancy to death and beyond. The ‘foot’ as portrayed in the poem refers to the child’s foot. Since a child is not aware of its limitations and lives in a dream world of imagination, the child’s foot wishes to fly like a butterfly or become a bulging apple on the branch of a tree. Over a period of time, it realizes that it is only a foot and its role is only to serve as a foot.
The poet then refers to the ‘adult food’ after death or an individual after death. Once a human being dies, he or she is normally buried. It is this burial of the dead body of the individual that is expressed in the line “it descended underground unaware, for there, everything was dark”. Once the ‘foot’ or the individual dies, it loses its human awareness and goes back to its child-like innocence. This is expressed in the sentence ‘It never knew it had ceased to be a foot’. That is why, like a child’s foot which is not aware that it is only a ‘foot’, it aspires to become a butterfly and fly or become an apple.
One can find several parallels in nature. All living beings born on the earth pass through the cycle of birth and death. A seed germinates to give a seedling. The seedling grows into an adult plant, may become a tree or a shrub and die. Its seeds bring a similar plant to life again. Similarly, the eggs of animals hatch and bring forth their young ones which grow, mature, lay eggs and later die. Their eggs bring back similar animals to life again.
