Commenatry/ Analysis on the Poem “the Pike” by Ted Hughes:

o Page 49 “…the hooked fish, the female, made a wild, panic-stricken, despairing fight that soon exhausted her..”

A part of the world around him, the opinions of others is a vital means by which Hall introduces the fisherman. Immediately present in “The Ledge” is the fisherman’s relationship with his wife, “She did not want him to go. It was Christmas morning.” (369). The wife’s reluctance to see her husband leave is indicative of their relationship and the caring man that the fisherman is— she wants Christmas, a day of joy and love, to be

He refers multiple times to fishing terms that the general audience may not be knowledgeable of such as “spinner” (“Once” para. 1), “hellgrammite” (“Once” para. 5), and “bass” (“Once” para. 5). These terms not only classify White as a fisherman but also suggest the importance or impact that fishing and the lake have on his life. By using logos in his writing, he gains credibility with his intended audience.

Most people know the poem “Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost. It is pretty famous. But do most people know the meaning of this unique poem? What does Robert Frost mean when he writes “if the world had to perish twice?” Although it is short, “Fire and Ice” is a puzzling poem filled with words that hold a meaning that we have to unlock.

Small details are instrumental in seeing the bigger picture. This is apparent when reading “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop. Most often the reader experiences visual imagery in poetry. In this poem the reader encounters visual, auditory, and sensory imagery. “The Fish” is filled with minute details that paint a picture for the reader. With each new element that is introduced, it becomes easier to visualize the fish. The speaker is able to show the reader the beauty as well as the ugliness of this creature with her vivid imagery. The imagery used is so distinct that the reader can envisage being the fisherman and catching this fish. Another important element involved in this poem is irony.

Sometimes our everyday experiences can strike us in ways that will influence our thinking in ways that might forever alter the way that we view our lives. In the short story “Fish Story,” Rick Bass primarily uses conflict, symbols, and the changes in a character to present a central theme reflecting the inevitability of our maturing thoughts and growing responsibilities that come incrementally with age. Gullason (1982) shares, “A short story represents a prose narrative usually concerned with a single aspect of personality changing or revealed as the result of conflict” (p. 222). We might interestingly find both of these dynamics within our weekly discussion’s short story assignment. Pigg (2017) explains, “The theme of a work of fiction is as much a creation of readers as it is for the writer because the user’s knowledge and beliefs play a part in determining the theme(s) they will recognize” (Attend Topic 4 Unit 2 [Video]). The writer of this week’s short story was likely to have known the theme that he intended to communicate while also recognizing the diversity of human thinking that gives us a myriad of perspectives. The “’Fish Story’s’ narrator is a 10-year-old boy in the early 1960’s living in rural Texas with parents who run a service station while their customer brings a 86 pound catfish creating a task to keep the fish alive until time to cook it” (Bass, 2009, pp. 1-2). As we recall our childhoods, most can likely remember how our imagination and fantasies began to collide with the realities of life, and this overreaching concept might allude to the theme of this piece of work. The narrator tells us how “He grew dizzy in the heat and from the strange combination of the unblinking monotony and utter fascination of his task until the trickling from the water hose seemed to be saturating and inflating the clouds as one would water a garden” (Bass, 2009, p. 2). As the narrator embraces the mundane task, his daydreams seem to symbolize the innocence of his youth. Later the story’s narrator “speaks less of childhood than of the general nature of the world in which we live, while contemplating that those days were different – we had more time for such thoughts, that time had not yet been corrupted”

“He did not truly feel good because the pain from the cord across his back had almost passed pain and into dullness that he mistrusted.”(74) Once both the fish and Santiago had reached the breaking point of conflict the story seemed to slow down in time to exemplify the adverse conditions that both characters were suffering from. The old man proves himself worthy of personal suffering with the cuts and scars on his hands and back along with all of the pulling and slipping the cords had upon his fragile body. Hemmingway shows in a big way how an out of proportioned conflict with an old fisherman and an 18 foot long marlin helps to magnify the significance of Santiago searching for his rebirth to manhood. With constant abstraction describing the fish and the sea in relation to brotherhood create interesting questions for Santiago to ponder. His rationalization for his fishing is that he was born to do it. “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” (103) Hemmingway proves that this fish represents all of Santiago’s built up tension to total the size of a gigantic marlin that is perceived as devastating but not unconquerable. The old man’s hopes and aspirations can overcome the adversity of the marlin’s size, along with the conditions of the old, hungry, and exhausted fisherman. Through outright suffering Santiago achieves a goal above his previous manhood by combating pain and

Rather than name this young boy and immediately create barriers between the character and the reader, Crabtree purposefully leaves the boy as an ambiguous figure to represent any person. “The pond was a book of life with the boy as the learner,” the author states (Crabtree 72). While the pond, in this instance, represents all that is encompassed in life, the boy is seen as the object that is being taught. The young boy constantly goes to the pond alone, just as life is lived alone. He experiences many things on his solemn adventures to the pond. The journey made daily to the pond portrays everyday life as a choice, the boy chooses to enjoy and experience all that nature has to offer while others, such as his parents, choose to stay back and view life from a distance rather than experience it to the full.

In this poem the poet uses many techniques to engage and hook the audience. Dan Ashlin expresses how the ocean has a life of its own through personification, an example is “it dreams, it mopes, it stretches”. I appreciate how the poet has used verbs in this technique as it positions me to feel like I can relate to human emotions, movements and

The fish is a major symbolism within the boy’s life. The fish is mainly an illustration of a lost friendship or love. “Once the boy had seen a huge fish jump up high in the pond’s center, though his father told him the pond held no fish,” (Crabtree 72). The fish is a representation of the young boy’s friendship. The young boy thinks that he has a friend or love, but his father tells him that there is no such thing as a true friend. Stating that the friendship has ended or that the friend has gone away, either due to moving or death. Crabtree then writes, “But the boy had seen one, and was watchful,” (Crabtree 72). The young boy waits for that friendship to come. He waits for that one person that can help him through the ups and downs of life. He has encountered that feeling of love and honesty but now is just waiting for that person to come

What makes Bishop’s poem a valuable example of good poetry is the continuous flow of her poetry. All throughout her poem, there is never a lack of beautiful imagery and description of the fish, as she starts off describing its physical appearance to illustrating its internal organs. In the lines “I thought of the coarse white flesh / packed in like feathers… / of his shiny entrails / and the pink-swim bladder / like a big peony” (27-33), the use of diction is varied, from prevailing adjectives (shiny, battered, tarnished) to relatively vague words (entrails, islinglass). This is extremely effective in Bishop’s poem, as the powerful adjectives give a deeper understanding of her feelings towards the fish and the capture, while the relatively

In the next stanza, the line "Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay", the poet is now using imagery with the waters, however it can also be a metaphorical representation of life due to

The swimmer finds himself past the point of no return in the quest, so to speak, and at the mercy of whatever he encounters, such as the shark Connelly suggests in the imagery of the last stanza. Finally, Connelly ended the poem by writing “But what we own beyond a shadow of a doubt is our fear of being eaten alive, torn apart in depths we have entered willingly” (20-27). This part of the metaphor uses the violent image of being attacked by a shark to represent the severity of our encounter with the sublime. In the quest for the ideal the only thing we can be certain of is that it will not be easy and the uncertainty of what will be there waiting for you. The shark in the ocean’s depth is an apppropriate symbol for the sublime as defined by Rousseau’s explanation of Kant’s philosophy: “something that is fearful and incomprehensible that one wants to resist” (“Kant’s Beauty and the Sublime” 1).

The Fish is a narrative monologue composed for 76 free-verse lines. The poem is constructed as one long stanza. The author is the speaker narrating this poem. She narrates a fishing experience. The author is out in a rented boat on a body of water, presumably a lake. She tries to describe the fish to the fullest, which appears to be the purpose of the poem, without saying either the specie or an approximate age. The narration gives the impression that the fish is slightly old. There are a number of reasons as to why that fish got caught by the author, including time of day, the weeds weighing it down, fish’s age, and the fact that it has been previously caught five times.

The short stanzas containing powerful imagery overwhelm the readers forcing them to imagine the oppression that the speaker went through in