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“The Gun” - Vicki Feaver

On moral ambiguity

“The Gun” starts on an ambiguous note. “Bringing a gun into a house / changes it.” Changes what? The gun or the house? Or both. When we read the opening stanza of the poem, it is impossible to say whether it is the gun or the house which changes. Does the house domesticate the gun (Latin, domesticus – belonging to the house), or is the house, or household, changed by the presence of a gun? The latter would seem more likely although since the gun is the subject of the sentence, the grammar points towards the gun being changed. As it turns out, this ambiguity is resolved by the end of the poem: it is the household which changes. But along the way, we accumulate a number of other and more concerning ambiguities.

 

The introduction of the gun is not a welcome event. It is immediately associated with death and the way that it lies “jutting over the edge” of the kitchen table indicates that it does not fit or belong in the house. Witness the harsh sounds of the word “jutting.” It is a word which suggests violence even in inaction. Think of jutting rocks or a jutting jaw. Adding to this sense of foreboding, the “grey shadow” is a deathly casting of the gun’s barrel, contrasting with the lively green of the tablecloth.

 

The promise of death is realised in the following stanza which ends with the stark lines: “Then a rabbit shot / clean through the head.” The language here is very sparse. The matter-of-fact sentence lacks even a main verb. The reader is presented with the rabbit in very much the same way that the narrator of the poem finds it. It is as though the narrator does not know what to make of the sudden appearance of the dead rabbit.

 

But the negativity of the first stanza is amplified as the poem progresses. We are guided to abhor the acts of killing as the narrator reminds us how life has been extinguished from the “creatures / that have run and flown.” So when the narrator’s (presumed) partner is addressed again, there is a strong undertone of accusation. His (let’s presume it’s a he) hands “reek” not just of “gun oil” but also of “entrails.” The disgust that this arouses in the reader extends beyond the physical to the moral. What the partner is doing seems morally vile. His actions are blunt and brutal as he “trample[s] / fur and feathers.” 

 

Which is why the next sentence, not even interrupted by a line break, is so shocking: “There’s a spring in your step; your eyes gleam / like when sex was fresh.” Far from being ashamed of the killing, the partner is positively revelling in it. Vampire-like, he seems to be drawing energy and vigour from his victims and is experiencing a pleasure akin to sex. What is the narrator to do now that she (can we assume it’s a she?) is living with a monster?

 

Next, the poem ramps up discomfort for the reader with the single line stanza: “A gun brings a house alive.” This clearly resolves the ambiguity of the first stanza which we discussed above but with an unexpected twist. The language of death associated with the gun has been replaced by an about face. The gun brings life. 

 

And now the narrator is all in. She may not join in the killing, but she derives excitement from dismembering and cooking the dead animals. The thrill of death and killing, it seems, is contagious. We have a list of busy verbs: “jointing / and slicing, stirring and tasting” as we witness the domestication of death. These words, common to cooking, reduce the process of killing to the level of the everyday. All of us stir, slice and taste. What could be more normal? And yet, the narrator reminds us that the real thrill is the thrill of death. Indeed it is the “King of Death” who has “arrived to feast.”

 

Which brings us to the final image of the poem. The narrator confesses to (boasts of?) being:

 

excited as if the King of Death

had arrived to feast, stalking

out of winter woods,

his black mouth

sprouting golden crocuses.

 

The reason for the excitement builds on an earlier idea in the poem which finds a kind of energy or renewal in death. So the final image sees new life in the form of spring flowers sprouting from the mouth of the King of Death. The narrator is suggesting less that winter brings spring than winter is spring. Death co-exists with springtime renewal. Indeed the two must be read together. As George Orwell might have written, death is life.

 

So by the end of the poem, the narrator has transitioned 180 degrees, from finding the killing of animals abhorrent, to finding it exciting and invigorating. She has acknowledged the cruelty of killing and embraced. She has recognised evil and identified with it. It all happens so fast, in the short and sparse poem that the reader is left not knowing quite what to make of it all.

 

The final ambiguity of the poem lies in that we do not really know what the poem wants with the moral aberration at its heart. There is no hint of a guiding opinion outside that of the narrator and in this sense, the force of the poem guides us towards accepting her account. This would cast the poem in the tradition of notorious art movements like the Futurists who famously celebrated war.

 

Alternatively, perhaps the poem is a first-person account of the process of corruption. In this reading, the poem shows us how quickly and easily individuals can embrace ideas, positions and practices that they know to be morally wrong. What is chilling here is that the narrator is in full knowledge of her actions at all times. She does not pretend, or lie to herself. On the contrary, she delights the death that she has welcomed into her home. 

 

But what, in the end, is the moral corruption that the poem presents? Put simply, it is the killing and eating of animals; something that most of us participate in, in our own homes, without much thought. In this sense, the only difference between most of us and the narrator is that we tend to forget about the killing part of a carnivorous diet, while she enjoys it.

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