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“Vultures” Introduction
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In Chinua Achebe's "Vultures," a pair of grim birds nuzzling each other after devouring a rotting corpse become a metaphor for the uneasy fact that human beings are equally capable of love and evil. Just as vultures can feast on death and still cuddle, the speaker observes, the man who runs a Nazi death camp might pick up chocolates for his beloved children on the way home; cruelty and tenderness can coexist in the same person. Whether that's cause for hope or despair, the speaker can't quite decide—but despair seems more likely. The poem first appeared in Achebe's 1971 collection Beware Soul Brother, and Other Poems.
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“Vultures” Summary
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The poem's speaker describes a grey, drizzly, miserable morning before sunrise, when a vulture, perched high up in a dead, jagged tree, nuzzled his mate with his mangled-looking head (which resembled a bald pebble on a stem buried in a heap of scraggly feathers). He bent this ugly head tenderly to hers. The day before, the speaker observes, these two birds ate the eyes and guts out of a rotting corpse floating in a muddy trench. When they were full, they chose a perch from which they could keep an unfeeling eye on the rest of the remains. How strange it is, the speaker says, that love—who's usually a pretty picky lady—is happy to find a place even in the vultures' house of rotting bones, to clear a space for herself there and even take a little nap, turning her face away! In just the same way, even the guy who was in charge of running a Nazi death camp, making his way home from work with the smell of burning bodies still in his nose, might have paused at a candy store to buy treats for his sweet little children, who were waiting patiently for their daddy to come home. If you like, the speaker concludes, you can thank God that even the most monstrous person can still have the capacity for love somewhere deep in their frozen heart. Or you can despair, because stuck right in the middle of the human capacity love lies an equal, eternal capacity for evil.
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“Vultures” Themes
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The Uneasy Coexistence of Evil and Love
Deep human evil, “Vultures” suggests, can and does coexist with love—and it’s not clear whether people should feel comforted or horrified by that fact.
The poem’s speaker observes a vulture couple nuzzling each other affectionately after a grisly meal. Recently, the speaker notes, this pair were devouring a rotting corpse and “the things in its bowel,” and they’re still sitting within “easy range” of the last of the body in case they want leftovers. Their cuddling thus strikes a macabre contrast with their behavior and their surroundings. To the speaker, it seems awfully peculiar that “love in other / ways so particular” doesn’t seem reluctant to show up among creatures who have just fed on something so horrific.
But this, the speaker reflects, is a metaphor for how things work among human beings, too. Just for example, the “Commandant” at Belsen (a notorious Nazi death camp) would have gone home from his evil day’s work with the “fumes of / human roast” still in his nose—and stopped at a candy store on the way to pick up a treat for his kids, who’d be waiting innocently at home for “Daddy’s / return.” This grim vision suggests that evil and love, apparent opposites, matter-of-factly coexist in all sorts of places.
The speaker thus doesn’t know whether to “praise bounteous / providence” (that is, a generous God) for the fact that even the cruelest heart might contain a “tiny glow-worm” of “tenderness”—or to be appalled that “kindred love” can rest so comfortably alongside “the perpetuity / of evil.” Worse still, perhaps a capacity for evil is inseparable from a capacity for love, “lodged” in it like a splinter.
The exact same phenomenon, the poem thus suggests, leaves its observers in an uneasy bind, unsure whether to find hope or horror in the simple fact that cruel and malicious people aren’t incapable of love. The poem’s fascination with dreadful images hints that this speaker, at least, leans more toward horror than consolation.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-51
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Vultures”
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Lines 1-13
In the greyness ...
... to hers.“Vultures” begins with a portrait of its titular birds perched up a tree on a “despondent dawn”—a grim grey morning before even the slightest “harbinger[] of sunbreak." The atmosphere is bleak. One vulture’s head looks “bashed in,” raw and mangled and flattened, bald as a “pebble” atop a “dump of gross feathers.”
Everything the poem’s imagery reveals makes the heart sink. This is a landscape of death and decay. The carrion birds look like dead meat and perch in a setting that looks like dead meat: even the dead tree they sit in resembles “broken bones,” a metaphor that evokes not just death but violent death. This, readers will soon see, is foreshadowing.
Strangely enough, in their hideous sunless landscape, these two birds are cuddling. The male vulture tilts his bald, mashed head “affectionately” towards its “mate,” and the pair “nestle close” to each other. It would be sweet, the gentle language suggests, if it weren’t all a little queasy-making, too.
These vultures, in their juxtaposition between the hideous and the tender, will become the poem’s guiding symbol. The poem’s speaker will suggest that horrors and love all too often coexist, not just in nature, but inside human hearts.
The poem will unfold in slow, measured free verse, without rhyme or a regular meter. Most lines here are of roughly equal length, only three or four words long, making it sound like the speaker is working their way through an idea carefully—or perhaps squeamishly, as if tiptoeing through pools of things they really don’t want to step in.
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Lines 13-21
Yesterday they picked ...
... telescopic eyes...
Unlock all 305 words of this analysis of Lines 13-21 of “Vultures,” and get the Line-by-Line Analysis for every poem we cover.
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Lines 22-29
Strange ...
... to the wall! -
Lines 30-40
...Thus the Commandant ...
... return... -
Lines 41-51
Praise bounteous ...
... of evil.
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“Vultures” Symbols
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The Vultures
The speaker’s terribly precise image of vultures gulping down rotting human meat, then nuzzling each other affectionately in a tree, becomes a symbol for the coexistence of love and evil.
It would be an unjust speaker who condemned vultures for eating a corpse. The vultures didn’t kill the guy they ate, after all; in fact, one might see their actions as a useful service, a bit of tidying-up that keeps the world from getting too corpsey.
Rather, this speaker spends so much time describing the vulture’s dinner because it’s revolting. The horror we human observers feel as vultures pick out the corpse’s eyeballs and eat “the things in its bowel” becomes an image of the the moral horror we feel when we see people committing evil deeds. The speaker’s observation of the smell of “human roast” caught in a Nazi death camp commandant’s nostril hair makes the link between physical disgust and moral disgust even clearer.
The vultures’ snuggling completes this picture. Again, there’s nothing wrong with vultures having a cuddle—but there is something a little disturbing about it, especially when juxtaposed with their nasty dinner. In just the same way, it might make a person uncomfortable (to put it mildly) to realize that an unrepentant mass murderer could go home to children he sincerely loves. If he’s capable of love, after all, it’s fearful to think that he should also be capable of deep and unreasoning hatred.
Through the symbolism of the vultures, then, the speaker makes a nauseating moral horror concrete. The way people feel upon realizing that the capacity for love doesn’t negate the capacity for evil, the poem suggests, is not unlike the way they feel watching vultures snuggling with their feet still sticky with human gore.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 4-21: “a vulture / perching high on broken / bones of a dead tree / nestled close to his / mate his smooth / bashed-in head, a pebble / on a stem rooted in / a dump of gross / feathers, inclined affectionately / to hers. Yesterday they picked / the eyes of a swollen / corpse in a water-logged / trench and ate the / things in its bowel. Full / gorged they chose their roost / keeping the hollowed remnant / in easy range of cold / telescopic eyes...”
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“Vultures” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Juxtaposition
This is a poem about a terrible juxtaposition: the coexistence of love and evil in exactly the same hearts.
The poem begins by creating a symbol of this unsettling truth. The speaker describes a pair of vultures—shabby beasts with “gross feathers” and heads that look “bashed-in,” as if they've been clubbed—nuzzling on a tree branch. Not long ago, the speaker observes, this icky but affectionate couple were enjoying a grisly feast: they “picked / the eyes” and gulped down the “bowel” of a corpse in a “water-logged trench.” To the speaker, it seems more than a little disturbing that the vulture’s love can sit so near to a scene of the goriest horror.
This juxtaposition isn’t a judgment on the vultures—who, after all, are just doing what vultures do. Rather, it’s an unpleasantly vivid symbol for what happens in a human heart when a person commits evil deeds and still expresses tenderness. The Nazi “Commandant” who leaves the death camp and stops by the candy shop on the way home to pick up a treat for his kids is enacting a moral version of the vulture’s dinner. His care for his children and his dreadful crimes sit there right next to each other.
The speaker can’t quite decide if that’s a comforting thought or not. Perhaps there’s hope here: even the cruelest hearts have room for tenderness. Or perhaps there’s only despair: the capacity for love doesn’t stop people from doing the most evil of deeds. The poem’s sharp eye for horrors hints that the speaker leans rather more toward the latter view than the former.
Where juxtaposition appears in the poem:- Lines 7-16: “nestled close to his / mate his smooth / bashed-in head, a pebble / on a stem rooted in / a dump of gross / feathers, inclined affectionately / to hers. Yesterday they picked / the eyes of a swollen / corpse in a water-logged / trench”
- Lines 30-40: “...Thus the Commandant at Belsen / Camp going home for / the day with fumes of / human roast clinging / rebelliously to his hairy / nostrils will stop / at the wayside sweet-shop / and pick up a chocolate / for his tender offspring / waiting at home for Daddy's / return...”
- Lines 43-51: “that grants even an ogre / a tiny glow-worm / tenderness encapsulated / in icy caverns of a cruel / heart or else despair / for in the very germ / of that kindred love is / lodged the perpetuity / of evil.”
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Personification
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Metaphor
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Imagery
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Enjambment
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“Vultures” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Despondent
- Unstirred
- Harbingers
- Gorged
- Hollowed remnant
- Charnel-house
- Belsen Camp
- Bounteous providence
- Germ
- Lodged
- The perpetuity of evil
Despondent-
(Location in poem: Lines 2-3: “one despondent / dawn”)
Unhappy, downcast, miserable.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Vultures”
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Form
“Vultures” is written in free verse, so it doesn’t use rhyme or meter. Written as a single 51-line stanza, it’s divided roughly into four sections:
- The vision of the vultures ("In the greyness [...] telescopic eyes...");
- The speaker's bemusement at love's behavior ("Strange [...] turned to the wall!");
- The vision of the dreadful "Commandant at Belsen" ("...Thus the Commandant at Belsen [...] return...");
- And the speaker’s concluding philosophical reflections. ("Praise bounteous [...]of evil.")
Significant ellipses mark the turning points between these thoughts. (In fact, some printings of the poem divide it into stanzas at the ellipses.)
The movement from the grotesque image of the cuddling vultures to the differently grotesque image of the Commandant popping by the candy shop invites readers to wonder whether the coexistence of evil and tenderness is natural or specifically, terribly human. The vultures aren’t evil: they’re just doing what vultures do. They merely provide a significant image, a juxtaposition between affection and revulsion. The parallel juxtaposition between the Commandant’s active, malicious evil and his care for his children is, by contrast, an image that should make the reader feel morally squeamish (as well as physically disgusted by the appalling smell of “human roast").
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Meter
There’s no regular meter in "Vultures," which is a free verse poem. Instead, Achebe uses line breaks to create rhythm. Most of the lines are roughly the same length: short, only three or four words long. This creates a measured, careful pace: the poem proceeds step by even step. However, the poem never lets readers get too comfortable, since lines consistently break in the middle of thoughts or smash one idea into another (as in lines 46-47, in which the speaker hustles readers swiftly out of a brief moment of hope: "in icy caverns of a cruel / heart or else despair").
Sometimes, the poem introduces an irregular line to create a particularly disquieting moment. Listen to the poem’s closing lines, for instance:
for in the very germ
of that kindred love is
lodged the perpetuity
of evil.The relatively even-paced lines 48-50, here, resolve into the grim brevity “of evil,” leaving the whole poem balanced on the word that is its theme.
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Rhyme Scheme
Written in free verse, “Vultures” doesn’t use a rhyme scheme. The lack of rhyme here keeps the poem’s tone quietly matter-of-fact, centering the speaker's grisly imagery and forcing readers to face horrors without any softening music.
A single, almost incidental rhyme does turn up in lines 35-36, where the speaker describes how the Commandant of Belsen might "stop / at the wayside sweet-shop." The rhyme, fittingly, brings the poem to a brief stop, highlighting the grotesquerie of this moment. The Commandant doesn't "stop" to reflect on his evil deeds; he only stops to pick up a treat for his kids.
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“Vultures” Speaker
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Readers learn nothing too personal about the poem’s speaker: there's no sense of their background, age, nor gender. Nonetheless, a clear picture of this person emerges through what they notice. This speaker’s grim, unflinching attention to the problem of evil suggests that they’ve lived long enough to see (and try to understand) some terrible things. And their uncertainty over whether it’s comforting or terrifying that evil and love can coexist in the same heart suggests that they’re a careful thinker, able to face and hold difficult questions without rushing to a glib conclusion.
Their eye for the bleak and horrific, however, hints that they might tend more toward despair than hope.
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“Vultures” Setting
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This poem’s speaker looks to two separate scenes: a place where vultures nuzzle each other in the trees after devouring a rotting corpse, and the German town of Belsen, the location of a Nazi death camp during World War II. While the speaker’s vision of the “Commandant” of Belsen is imagined, it’s possible that they saw those cuddling vultures with their own eyes. The picture they paint is certainly a vivid one: a grey pre-dawn plain where dead trees jut out of the ground like "broken / bones," a place whose very atmosphere suggests violence and decay. Belsen, on the other hand, the speaker evokes through only one horrific detail: the stench of "human roast," burning corpses, that clings to the Commandant's nose hairs.
Implicitly, both scenes are connected to war. It’s not clear how the vultures' dinner ended up in a “water-logged trench,” but if there are human bodies lying around in trenches, some kind of violence is certainly afoot. Achebe, who published this poem in 1971, may have been thinking in particular of the bloody civil war that began in his native Nigeria in 1967.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Vultures”
Literary Context
Chinua Achebe (1930-2013) was a world-famous Nigerian novelist and poet. Born in the Igbo town of Ogidi, Achebe grew up steeped in Protestant Christianity (his parents’ religion), world literature, and traditional Igbo storytelling. In interviews, he often spoke of his slow realization that many of the books he loved as a boy invited him to side with white colonial “heroes” against African “villains”—and that a distinctly African literature was needed to counter such racist narratives. He would become one of the leading lights of that literature.
Achebe was a prolific writer, producing five novels and many volumes of short stories and poetry. By far his most famous work, however, is his first: the novel Things Fall Apart, a story of poisonous male violence and colonial cruelty in a small Nigerian tribe. On its publication in 1958, this novel (titled after a line in a famous Yeats poem) made a worldwide splash, becoming one of the best-known works of African literature. That work, like this poem, took a dark view of human nature, tracing one man’s downfall as egotistical fear drives him to desperate acts of cruelty and colonial powers crush his way of life.
Alongside his writing, Achebe worked as a schoolteacher, a radio broadcaster, an academic, and a politician. He held professorships at universities in both Nigeria and the United States. Wherever he was, though, he always remained deeply concerned with Nigerian political life, even and especially after the dominant regime threatened to jail him in the 1990s and he had to flee the country.
Achebe is now recognized as one of the most important and influential writers of the 20th century. Writers from Toni Morrison to Maya Angelou to Margaret Atwood have spoken of their debt to him.
Historical Context
In writing this poem, Achebe was certainly thinking of the horrors of World War II and particularly of the death camps in which Nazis murdered millions of Jewish people (as well as gay people, Romani, and other persecuted groups). The speaker’s allusion to Belsen—one of the most notorious of those camps—suggests that this was a place that epitomized evil. Both the overwhelming number of people the Nazis murdered and the mechanical efficiency of those murders exemplify terrifying, hard-to-face aspects of human nature.
Achebe might also have had more recent history in mind. Just a few years before he published this poem, a bloody civil war had ripped his native Nigeria apart. Nigeria had only gained independence from British colonizers in 1960, and Achebe and many of his fellow citizens had had high hopes for their newly free country. Sadly, a combination of a sudden and destabilizing British withdrawal, a legacy of colonial oppression, and tensions between the new republic’s ethnic groups came quickly to a boil. A series of coups and counter-coups shredded the government, and full-blown war broke out in 1967.
Writing in 1971, Achebe—who was deeply involved in left-wing Nigerian politics—might thus have been expressing both a general despair at human nature and a particular, close-to-home sorrow. The anonymous corpse upon whom the poem’s vultures feast might be read as both a victim of human evil in general and a specifically Nigerian casualty, one death representing the death of a national dream.
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More “Vultures” Resources
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External Resources
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A Brief Biography — Learn more about Achebe's life and work via the Poetry Foundation.
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Achebe's Legacy — Read an article discussing Achebe's literary reputation and ongoing influence.
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to a reading of the poem.
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Achebe on African Literature — Listen to Achebe talking about what it means to be an African reader and writer.
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An Interview with Achebe — Listen to an interview with Achebe in which he discusses his writing and his time as a radio broadcaster.
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