Basking Shark Flashcards
“to stub an oar on a rock where none should be,”
Technique: Metaphor
Comparing the shark to a rock.
Suggests its solid bulk and shows the sudden surprise and fear of the poet. It can also suggest the shark is unintelligent.
“To have it rise with a slounge out of the sea,”
Technique: Repetition/ Scots dialect
Repeating the same verb form as was used in line one continues the sense of a scene being built, creating curiosity in the reader.
The Scots dialect word ‘slounge’ is a perfect word to depict the slow, lazy lounge of the vast shark as it rises in the sea.
Its speed suggests this shark is not attacking MacCaig.
“Is a thing that happened once (too often) to me”
Technique: Parenthesis/ Humour
By putting ‘too often’ within brackets, MacCaig uses idiom to create a playful and informal tone.
Although MacCaig is shocked, he is still trying to make light of the situation.
It also suggests the tale is about to be continued, creating more interest in his story, because he is deliberately holding back the full account.
“But not too often - though enough…”
Technique: Tone
The tone is confiding and light hearted.
MacCaig reveals that he is glad this encounter happened but would not like to repeat it.
“I count as gain/ That once I met, on a sea tin-tacked with rain”
Technique: Enjambement
This creates a sense of MacCaig telling his story in a very natural way, like free speech.
‘I count as gain’
Suggests that the experience was valuable to the poet.
“… on a sea tin-tacked with rain,”
Technique: Metaphor/ Onomatopoeia/ Alliteration
Compares the rain falling on the sea to someone tapping tacks into a tin.
These techniques beautifully gel to depict the sound of rain pinging onto water: the scene is visual and easy to imagine.
“That roomsized monster with a matchbox brain”
Technique: Word Choice/ Metaphor/ Contrast/ Hyperbole
Emphasises how huge the shark’s body with humorous use of exaggeration, contrast and metaphor. The shark’s large body is compared to its tiny brain. There is also a sense of intimidation.
‘monster’
suggests that the shark may be scary and intimidating.
‘roomsized’
suggests huge scale of creature.
‘matchbox brain’
suggests its brain is tiny - creating a patronising tone.
Here the poet sees the shark as low down in the evolutionary scale. Later, MacCaig suggests the shark is just as valuable as mankind.
This suggests MacCaig has had a major epiphany from this experience.
“He displaced more than water.”
Technique: Ambiguous/ Double meaning
The shark not only moves the water and MacCaig’s boat, it also unsettles MacCaig mentally, causing him to think about his place on earth.
“He shoggled me/Centuries back…”
Technique: Word Choice/Enjambement
The Scottish word “shoggled” perfectly suggests how MacCaig is knocked off balance by the shark but also applies metaphorically to the way he feels as if he has time-travelled back to prehistory.
“… this decadent townee,”
Technique: Word Choice/ Tone
MacCaig implies he has lost touch with the natural word and has believed himself to be a sophisticated city dweller of great importance. Meeting the shark forces a re-consideration.
The adjectve ‘decadent’ implies that mankind/MacCaig is in a state of self-indulgant decay.
The noun ‘townee’ is prejorative inn tone: he mocks himself as an urban man who has lost connection with his atavistic roots.
“Shook on a wrong branch of his family tree”
Technique: Metaphor
An awkwardly expressed line mirrors the awkward feelings of MacCaig. He describes himself shaking with shock at the close encounter but also as a part of the same ancestral family as the shark.
He feels like an interloper since himans left the water to evolve while sharks remained there; thus, the family tree proper, belongs to the shark. not to humans who are on a ‘wrong branch’ of it
