Basking Shark Flashcards
“To stub an oar on a rock where none should be,”
‘stub an oar’ - small boat suggested by word choice of ‘oar’
‘rock’ - metaphor: shark is thick skinned, solid, hard, large like a rock
‘none should be’ - open sea
“To have it rise with slounge out of the sea”
‘slounge’ - word choice: combination of ‘slow’ and ‘lounge’ suggests the shark is calm, relaxed, peaceful, lazy. Not really threatening
“Is a thing that happened once (too often) to me.”
‘(too often)’ - Parenthesis: adds humour. He’s suggesting this experience was frightening, uncomfortable, unsettling so is replayed in his mind a lot. Not threatening, but size makes him apprehensive.
“But not too often - though enough. I count as gain”
‘but not too often’ - contradicts gimself: the experience did have value and made him think
‘enough’ - not looking to repeat the experience
‘gain’ - he did enjoy it/get something out of it despite his previouse descriptions of not liking it.
“That once I met, on a sea tin-tacked with rain,”
‘tin-tacked’ - Alliteration: describes the sound of rain.
Metaphor: creates the image of raindrops hitting the water like up-turned drawing pins (tin-tacs)
“That roomsized monster with a matchbox brain.”
Metaphor: shark is massive, the size of a room but its brain is tiny. ‘Monster’ has connotations of scary, big, dangerous, evil. Repeated the idea later in the poem.
“He displaced more than water. He shoggled me”
‘displaced more than water’ - Metaphor: literally the shark moved the level of the seawater up, but he is saying it moved something inside his brain up. It made him think differently.
‘shoggled’ - Scottish word which reminds us he’s Scottish (makes the experience even wilder). The word means ‘shake’, mentally.
“Centuries back - this decadent townee”
‘centuries back’ - a long time ago humans exister at the same starting point as the basking shark (evolutionarily)
‘decadent townee’ - not a country person. lives a life full of comfort in cirt. disconnects from wilderness of nature.
“Shook on a wrong branch of his family tree.”
‘shook’ - repeats the idea of being shaken by the experience
‘wrong branch of his family tree’ - metaphor: a different evolutionary path could have seen humans evolving in a different, less smart way
“Swish up all the dirt and, when it settles, a spring is all the clearer.”
Metaphot: he’s describing swirling dirt in a puddle being like ideas swirling in his mind. This experience has left him with clearer thoughts. He understands something new now.
“I saw me, in one fling, emerging from the slime of everything.”
‘slime of everything’ - primordial sluidge: clump of cells that began life on earth
“So whos the monster? The thought made me grow pale”
‘so who’s the monster? - rhetorical question: He’s pondering whether humans are, in fact, more monstrous than the huge shark. We do more harm than the shark. We actively choose to be cruel, evil, unpleasant to each other/animals. We also have a destructive impact on the natural world e.g climate change.
‘grow pale’ - fear/shock
“For twenty seconds while, sail after sail, the tall fin slid away and then the tail.”
‘sail after sail’ - metaphor: compares the shark’s fins to sails on a boat
Elongated vowels create a slow, calm, peacfulfeeling as the shark slides back under the water, reminiscent of the image created at the start of the poem.
