The Leash Essay Questions

What is the significance of the dog wanting to run towards the trucks? What does this symbolize for the speaker?

The speaker's dog thinks she loves the pickup trucks, "the loud / roaring things," in her simple canine way, so much that she might kill herself chasing them if there were no leash. This is not the first threat of death or injury in the poem: in lines 8-10 the speaker imagines sucking toxic river water into her lungs. The reflections in lines 29-31 help clarify the connection between these two: the speaker thinks that we all chase the things that might destroy us. In the case of the dog chasing trucks, it is a self-destructive urge born from enthusiasm and love. This is poignant in the context of the poem, because it is so much more benign than the self-destruction related to bombs, guns, and toxins, and solidifies the metaphor of the dog leash as the self-restraint that holds us all back from destruction.

What does Limón achieve by addressing the reader directly?

The direct address to "Reader" in line 10 serves to invite the audience into the shared emotions that the speaker is experiencing. The rhetorical question in lines 7-10 is in the second person "you," but also reveals a very intimate form of despair on the part of the speaker. By addressing the audience directly, the poem seems to say, "it's alright if you're also feeling despair. We'll get through this together." At its core, "The Leash" is a poem that seeks harmony, encapsulated in the image of "walk[ing] together / peacefully," but peace cannot be achieved by one person alone. The speaker invited the reader in to reaffirm any emotions we may be experiencing, and moreover to invite us into the process of co-creating that peace, harmony, and communal resilience that will defeat despair.