'Individual Vs. Self In Poor Fish'

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

knows that she is starving for true love and exploits that weakness to achieve his goal.

The theme of “what do fish have to do with anything?” is that unhappiness can sometimes cause someone to be blind and ignorant towards others needs. For instance, Willie’s mom does not want him looking or talking to the homeless man on the streets. She tells her son this because she is unhappy so she does not see what the man is going through and instead says “He is sick do not look at him.” Another example is that Willie’s mother does not like answering Willie’s questions concerning others needs. She does not answer willie’s questions because she could honestly care less about a problem that is not hers. She could care less about other peoples problems because of her unhappiness. To illustrate, at the end of the story the mother has the

“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

And when «she knows it's happening: that thing, that connection» between them, when she dances for him and «making him fall in love with her» she says to him: «We've got all we need. We don't need love. Don't diminish yourself – don't reveal yourself as a sentimental sap. You're dying to do it, but don't. Let's not lose this.» (p. 231). She knows she's driving him nuts, she knows that her rejection of his feelings makes him want to attach to her sentimentaly even more. She dances for him and teaches him what life really is. She – a 34-year-old illiterate janitor, teaches him – colledge proffessor, ex-dean, a member of highest rank of society class, what life is all about.

Antwone "Fish" Fisher is a complex individual who has been through a great deal of psychological and sociological conflicts in his short life. His mother was arrested and then abandons him, he was abused physically and emotional, and then lived on the streets. In short, nearly everything bad that can possible happen to a person has happened to young Antwone Fisher before he has reached adulthood. In his autobiographical book Finding Fish (2001), Fisher explains how the torment that he experienced in his youth shaped the man that he would become in adulthood. Although this story tells about one young man's difficulties in life and how he had to overcome obstacles in order to be a functional and positive member of society, it is really a story about the larger human condition and how every person becomes affected by their experiences.

The narrator through out most of the short story comes of as a pretty shallow character. Besides his stereotyping tendencies he comes of as callous and un-imaginative. He shows his lack of

I wish I could feed the fish, he thought. He is my brother. But I must kill him and keep strong to do it. Slowly and conscientiously he ate all of the wedge-shaped strips of fish” (59). This relates to perseverance by showing how Santiago doesn’t really want to harm the fish, but he knows he has to in order to make a living. Santiago’s hand has cramped up, yet he feels sorry for the fish, not himself. He has caught a few small fish to eat raw. He wishes he could feed the

Though the narrator has the full ability to see, he lacks the ability to connect to the world and to the people around him. He is described as an egotistical, superficial being who is very shallow in the way he views the people and events in his life. The man,

This is shown by the way he talks to her and how he acts around her.

He subjects both Julia and Francesa to a feeling of him wanting the other and mentally torments Julia as she has to watch the love of her life, be with another girl and she can’t do anything about it. This affects Julia so heavily that she is never able to have a good relationship with anyone in her life without feeling insecure about herself. In fact, she harms or pushes people away before that can do the same to her. She

He seems unsatisfied with the women he has because it isn’t the woman he wants. He takes the young girl and yelled at her once and after that she became less resistant toward him and he began to train her. Even though he is getting the girl where he wants he is still enamored by

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.

he tries to convince her to seize the day. And because of this love he felt

He idolizes her as if she were the Virgin Mary: "her figure defined by the half- opened door . . . The light from the lamp opposite our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there, and falling, lit up the hand upon the railing." Yet even this image is sensual with the halo of light accentuating "the white curve of her neck." The language makes obvious that his attraction is physical rather than spiritual: "Her dress swung as she moved her body and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side." His desire for her is strong and undeniable: "her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood"; "my body was like a harp and her words and ges­tures were like fingers running upon the wires." But in order to justify his love, to make it socially acceptable, he deludes himself into thinking that his love is pure. He is being hypocritical, although at this point he does not know it.