The Fish

The Fish Literary Elements

Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View

The Poet (Moore)

Form and Meter

Free Verse

Metaphors and Similes

simile:
-"the submerged shafts of the // sun, / split like spun / glass"
-"opening and shutting itself like // an / injured fan"
-"crabs like green lilies"

metaphor:
-Critic Darlene Williams Erickson writes, "Many critics have pointed out Moore's use of the sea as a metaphor for facing innermost terror. In 'The Fish,' she is doing precisely that, placing herself—and analogously, her readers—directly into a grave where both she and they must wrestle with life's deepest fears. Yet on the very edge of terror one also encounters life's heights, for even the deepest sea is lit...[by the sun]"
-the "ash heaps" may be a metaphor for death, suggesting burning, cremation, refuse

Alliteration and Assonance

alliteration:
-"the submerged shafts of the // sun, / split like spun / glass"
-"move themselves with spotlight swiftness"
-"the water drives a wedge"

assonance:
-"wade / through black jade"
-"one keeps / adjusting the ash heaps"

Irony

n/a

Genre

Poetry

Setting

The Sea

Tone

Ambivalent, grave, gloomy

Protagonist and Antagonist

Both sea and cliff are protagonists and antagonists

Major Conflict

The struggle between the sea and the cliff: how they will coexist, which will prevail.

Climax

The "water drives a wedge / of iron through the iron edge / of the cliff" brings the physical conflict between cliff and sea to the fore.

Foreshadowing

n/a

Understatement

-"the chasm side is dead"

Allusions

n/a

Metonymy and Synecdoche

n/a

Personification

-"the sea grows old in it"
-"the submerged shafts...move themselves with spotlight swiftness"

Hyperbole

n/a

Onomatopoeia

n/a

Buy Study Guide Cite this page