The Basking Shark Poem

Skomal introduces his claim by sharing an anecdote of an early incident taken place in the 1950’s of two fishermen that killed a “potential menace” (Skomal). His strong language evokes a creature. Most importantly, he uses the word “potential”. We don’t know for a fact if the shark was out to seek harm or just innocently swimming around the ocean without any intentions. Flash forward to fifty years later, he shares a part he was involved in by rescuing a shark from the same area. These two contradicting events help support his argument about our attitudes toward the shark over the decades.

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

.....where circles deepAround thy neck in harmless graceSo soft and sleekly hold their place.The increase in speed creates an effect within the poem but also needs to be married with the longer stanza so that it fits into the rhythm of the rest of the poem.

The poem does not follow a rhyme scheme or meter, which means that there is rhythm in the poem and it makes the poem more like a song. The poem has four stanza’s and has five lines within each stanza.

In the first couple of stanzas the poet, Norman MacCaig, creates a strong emotional response

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 third stanza which marks the middle of the poem begins, "The Ocean said, Come flow freely with me" with ten syllables written in pentameter accompanied by iambic, spondee and trochee syllables. A steady rhythm in meter is noted in the next four lines which declines to trimeter for all four lines. Line fourteen, "and the creatures in my seas." contains pyrrhic, trochee and anapestic syllables. The fifteenth line in trimeter, "Here your tears will disappear," contains for the first time in the poem, a dactyllic syllable accompanied by the iambic syllable. Line sixteen, "and your worries will cease." contains again the iambic syllable now accompanied by the pyrrhic syllable. The last line in the series of trimeter lines is line seventeen which states, "Be the element that I need.". concludes the metered pattern. In lines fourteen through seventeen the meter is measured the same, however there is a new element added to the syllables previously used in the beginning stanzas. The repeated trimeter is suggestive of familiar situation but the new syllable is

It swirled against the log spiles of the bridge. Nick looked down into the clear, brown water, colored from the pebbly bottom and watched the trout keeping themselves steady in the current with wavering fins. As he watched them they changed their position by quick angles, only to hold steady in the fast water again. (Hemingway 177)

“I was alone and orphaned, in the middle of the Pacific, hanging on to an oar, an adult tiger in front of me, sharks beneath me, a storm raging above me.” (40,133)

Sharks are one of the most feared carnivores in the sea. There are 365 species of of sharks in the sea as we know today. All sharks are carnivores. Most of them eat live fish, including other sharks. A shark's most common natural enemy is an another shark. Most sharks eat their prey whole, or they tear off large chunks of the bodies. Some sharks crush their prey. Others take out small pieces off flesh from large fish. Sharks also feed on dead or dying animals. Sharks have the reputation of attacking human beings. But less than 100 shark attacks a year are reported throughout the world. Sharks are most common in warm seas and oceans. Whale sharks, are the largest shark known to man. Sharks are classified in the order

The fourth line uses two verbs, which have internal rhyme to make the line flow

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).

“Where what breathes, breathes / and what drinks, drinks,” the persona says (3,5). Natures relationships depicted in the first stanza are beautiful. At first, something as simple as the “islands” may seem unimportant (1). Once analyzed, its purposed is defined by providing a warm home for life to sustain. Without the “restless wind” and “incoming tide,” the animals could not sustain (4,6). Everything in the universe is interconnected.

Next, the speaker talks about the fish’s eyes, larger, shallower, and yellower than hers. The different pieces of fishing line caught in his jaw shows how many times he either escaped or was let go by the other fishers. Then the description of the rented boat, the parts of the boat that all turned into a rainbow.

In the poem The Shark by E.J. Pratt it creates vivid imagery and symbolism when reading it. The main image or symbol directly is the shark. The sharks’ image can be seen as calm, puzzling and unexplainable. Unlike that of most sharks this one is different. The shark is smooth, patiently awaiting the time to make his right move. Effortlessly he is described as “lithely and leisurely” the way he swam, cutting the water with his fin creates an image of his enormous body floating through the water with great speed and ease.