The Bull Moose

The poem is told by an unnamed narrator in a matter-of-fact voice. Written in free verse, the unrhymed and unmetered poem can be called a narrative work since it tells a story. It is a romantic poem in the sense that it follows traditional romanticism in which nature is seen as good and redemptive. However, in romanticism, humans are considered a part of nature, but “The Bull Moose” presents humans and the wild world in opposition. This is perhaps because the poem is a romantic poem of the 20th century, when human interference in ecology is far worse than the 18th century in which romanticism as a philosophy arose.

Although the poem is told in a straightforward tone, it is very clearly a poem with a point of view and a moral center. The narrator seems to be objectively observing the journey of a bull moose from the mountains into human contact, but the choice of vocabulary and the juxtaposition of images make the poem’s underlying quiet anger very clear. Nowlan expertly uses the literary device of irony by creating a distance between the supposedly objective tone and the reality of the moose’s condition and treatment. The irony deepens when the reader considers the gap between the moose’s reality and the townspeople’s perception of him. The narration belies the poem’s serious themes and allegorical bent. “The Bull Moose” can also be read as an allegory for the death of innocence and individualism in a corrupt world, as well as an allegory for the death of Jesus Christ.

“The Bull Moose” poem is structured as a descent in three ways. The first descent is the moose’s physical journey from the mountains to human habitat below. The second is his descent from the natural world of safety into a hostile, voyeuristic world. The third is the poem’s structural descent: The stanzas shorten until they end in a couplet. If considered in terms of the number of lines in progressive stanzas, the poem can be visualized as an inverted pyramid. Thus, its structure echoes the physical descent of the moose and the moral descent of the humans who encounter him. The moose descends from “the purple mist of trees on the mountain” (Line 1). The moose’s origins are shrouded in mystery and mysticism, as if he were an ancient godlike figure—an implicit comparison recurring throughout the poem. The descriptor “purple” (Line 1) links the moose to sweetness and romance, as well as royalty, blood, bravery, and sacrifice. Purple is often associated with kings and knights, as well as a noble death; thus, from the very first line, the poem’s romantic imagery is offset by a sense of foreboding.

As the moose descends the mountain, the trees keep getting shorter, symbolizing his demystification. White spruces and cedars give way to “tamarack swamps” (Line 3); the magnificence and purity of the winter trees is contrasted with the wet, squalid swamplands. Color symbolism comes into play again, since white is associated with innocence, purity, and divinity. But even the swamps are not as bad as where the moose ends up, because the swamps are still part of the wilderness. However, the “pole-fenced pasture” (Line 5), a human construct, curtails his movement and stops him short. From this point forward, the moose’s physical movement ends—a keen irony symbolizing the end of wilderness via human intervention. Further, the moose’s stumbling, lurching motions suggest he may be old, unwell, or—at the very least—exhausted.

Inside the pasture, the moose is trapped, and the vibrant landscape of the first stanza gives way to stasis. The moose is now “too tired to turn, or perhaps, aware / there was no place left to go” (Lines 6-7). A creature of energy until now, the moose is exhausted and filled with foreboding about his own destiny. In another sense, he is lost in an unfamiliar landscape, knowing no way forward, which is ironic since he is now supposedly in a civilized area. Thus, the poem subverts the ideas of wild and civilized, showing the reader what is wild to humans is home to wild beasts and vice versa. This stanza introduces the cattle in the pasture, who are quick to dissociate themselves from the moose, ostensibly because they can sense he is going to die. But there is a deeper meaning to the cattle’s behavior. Given the poem’s animal symbolism, the domesticated animals represent those who toe the line. Because the bull moose is a wild animal (representing iconoclasts), the cattle prefer to stay away. They sense the doom towards which the bull moose is headed, and thus move to the other side of the pasture, and wait. The verb “waited” (Line 10) heightens the tension in the poem, deepening its suspense. For what are the cattle waiting? What do they know that the reader can yet only sense?

In the third and fourth stanzas, people come into the picture. The language in which the behavior of the gathering crowd is described is ostensibly neutral, but the particular vocabulary shows the narrator’s sympathy for the moose and loathing for the crowd. Even the description of the cars lining up the road to watch the moose are loaded because they pit the solitary animal against the dozens of voyeuristic human eyes. The image evokes the familiar picture of wild animals being gawked at by humans in zoos and sanctuaries. The children “teased” (Line 12) the moose; young men “snickered” (Line 18) while pouring beer down his throat; and young women photograph these scenes. Loaded verbs like “snickered” and “teased” emphasize the speaker’s stance on the actions of the people. The bull moose is also thought to have escaped from a “[f]air” (Line 15) or a marketplace or a circus as if he were a commodity and a curiosity.

The reaction of the townspeople shows that the moose is a very unfamiliar sight. People are simply not used to wild animals, which symbolizes their alienation from nature. An old man compares the bull moose to a castrated moose he once saw pull a plough. Moose are so rarely seen in lands where they once roamed free that even the oldest man in the area can barely recall seeing one. Further, the idea of a castrated bull moose reflects the loss of the animal’s power and agency. The notion of a wild animal pulling a plough is shocking. It should be noted here that the bull moose of the past pulled the plough with an ox—a castrated bull cow. The bull is castrated so it becomes more docile and can be used for farm work. Thus, both the old bull moose and the ox are victims of humans—tampered and mutilated so they can be useful and non-threatening.

The behavior of the humans at the pasture is made all the worse by the bull moose’s gentleness, gazing at the children like “an old tolerant collie” (Line 14). His docility symbolizes that he has accepted his fate, or that he is trying to domesticate himself in order to survive. In a Christian reading of the poem, the bull moose represents the Christ-like ideal of bravery in suffering. He represents Christ being mocked on his way to Golgotha: the hill on which he was crucified. Stanza six makes obvious the Christian imagery when the moose lets the humans fiddle with him, and a girl places a cap of thistles on his head (paralleling the crown of thorns put on Jesus’s head before his crucifixion). This section of the poem makes it clear that the moose is fated for the same destiny as Jesus.

The poem uses various similes and metaphors to describe the moose. The evolving comparisons show how the narrator views the animal versus how the townspeople see him. In the seventh stanza, the people urge the wildlife wardens not to shoot the moose as he is “shaggy and cuddlesome” (Line 25) like a stuffed animal. They cannot see that the moose is docile because he is old and unwell. Previously, the gentle moose is compared to a patient collie, a sensitive and loyal breed of herding dog. Thus, the townspeople see the moose as a benign, tamable entity. However, the narrator sees the moose like a blood god: a doomed and divine presence.

In the last stanza, the perception of the people changes when the moose suddenly rears his head. The narrator continues to describe the moose as a “scaffolded king” (Line 30), a tortured god. But for the townspeople, the moose now constitutes a threat. They run away from him, scared by his roar. This shows that humans are intrinsically threatened by what they deem beyond their control.

The ending of the poem is a little ambiguous, since there is a gap between the raising of the rifles and the moose toppling over. It is unclear if the wardens shot the moose, or the moose naturally died. The moose’s earlier premonition that the pasture is the end of the line shows he may have descended the mountain to die. On the other hand, the moose’s abrupt motion disperses the crowds and may have alarmed the wardens into shooting him. In either case, the suggestion is that the moose chose his destiny: He preferred to assert his wild nature and die, rather than live a tame life like a stuffed toy or beast of burden. In this, the moose represents any free-spirited person who does not confirm to societal rules.

The final line of the poem, too, is ambiguous. Why are the young men all leaning on their car horns as the moose falls to the earth? Perhaps they are afraid of what they have witnessed, or perhaps they use their human-made tools to pay a noisy tribute to the fallen beast. The cacophony of artificial noise in conjunction with the death of a wild animal makes a stunning final image.