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
