Basking Shark Commentary
...as given. In the first stanza the poet begins with talking about the man expecting something (a rock) and finding out that it is not (instead a shark) and that was the thing that surprised and shocked him and made him think to himself that once is enough (1st stanza, 3rd line). Remember that the poet is recalling an experience hence thoughts are inserted to help the reader relive the experience with the ‘man’. The first stanza already shows hints about the poem being about prejudice, the poet talks about expecting something and not getting what you expected. The second stanza starts describing the experience; he recalls ‘That once I met, on a sea tin-tacked with rain…’ (2nd stanza, 2nd line) He (the ‘I’ in the poem’ starts to recall about a day when it rained heavily (tin-tacked) in the sea and he the start of this experience. Then he mentions the ‘monster’, (2nd stanza, 3rd line) - ‘That roomsized monster with a matchbox brain.’ The first obvious sign being related to the shark but, it has become too obvious that the monster is actually him. This related back to the whole message of the poem and not judging people by first impressions, this ‘monster’ is actually him recalling the whole experience and describing himself after he rethinks and finds out from this recall that was the one who judged the shark on its first impression, hence the reference to ‘monster’. Although this can be analyzed into different ways, it is easier to continue in this theme so that we can see that the overall message is actually conveyed and not another mixed-up and confused message. The third stanza continues in the same trend and actually gives us a bigger hint about the message of the poem. The third stanza is him describing the shark as a ‘decadent townee (3rd stanza, 2nd line) but we can also think that he is not describing the shark but instead describing himself. The ‘man’ would do this because in that moment of recalling he sees himself as the outsider, the ‘townee’ who has come to a place where he doesn’t belong and yet acted like it was still his territory (being in the sea, not aware of creatures who LIVE in the sea) but he may also have thought that the shark is a ‘townee’ because the shark (a basking shark) is not the typical shark (it is harmless) hence people think that is not a regular shark so the ‘man’ feels that the shark is also ‘out of place’ and doesn’t belong but this is also disguising the message of prejudice in, he believes that the shark feels out of place and doesn’t belong without actually knowing, he judges the shark on the first time he sees it, which essentially is what the poet discourages the reader to do to anyone. The fourth and fifth stanza describes the action, in the fourth stanza the man sees things clearer again (4th stanza, 2nd line – ‘…Is all clearer again’) and he feels ‘connected’ to the shark. - ‘…I saw me,…Emerging from the slime of everything.’ (4th stanza, 2nd line – 3rd line) The ‘man’ feels connected to the shark and sees the beginning of life, where everything emerged from slime, so now he feels that he and the shark are connected and this moment of realization he sees himself and the world in a different way, he sees that it is not that humans own this earth but all the other creatures who live on it as we all come from the same place and it is not that humans should be...