Part one of term paper
The entire poem is a metaphor taken literally it can be considered just a short story about a man stranded on a beach. He wakes up early in the morning, awake and very alive, he goes to sleep feeling secure. He learns how to survive by eating porcupine bellies and keeping their quills as a prize for his hunting and survival skills. Taken ...

Part two of term paper
... that was disturbed by the incident that may have ruined his life. Yet this man faced this as a new beginning, as a survivor. Birney uses the roasting of the porcupine bellies as a symbol of his facing the difficult situations that faced him in stride. He uses those situations to his advantage and takes pride in the way he handles them thus the reference to keeping the quills in his hat. In the third stanza Birney shows us through a series of metaphorical actions the characters evolution in h ...