Fix those shirts and smooth those skirts, gang. Appearances are a big deal for the speaker of "Poem III" in Neruda's The Book of Questions. Actually, you can relax. Heck, you can even kick off your shoes. The speaker's not hung up so much on how things look, but what looking at things means. In other words, are our eyes to be trusted? Is the way our visual sense organizes the world accurate? Or is there other level of reality that we're just not able to see? These are the kinds of questions that come up when you take a good, long (maybe too-long) look at the world.
Questions About Appearances
- Do you trust the speaker's views of the world? Why or why not?
- Why are so some things in this poem hidden from view?
- If the speaker is asking us, the readers, these questions, then why doesn't he ask us how things look from our perspective?
Chew on This
This poem shows us that surface appearances are never to be trusted.
The speaker's questions are proof that we can never truly see things as they are. Our doubts and prejudices always color the way we see the world.