Basking Shark

Question 1

What are the themes in basking shark?

Answer 1

1. nature and our connection to it
2. process of evolution and our place in it
3. appearance vs reality

Question 2

The poem is written in which person?

Answer 2

First person as it is a personal experience/ reflection.

Question 3

“stub”

Answer 3

suggests pain/ harshness

Question 4

“to have it rise”

Answer 4

allows us to imagine the shark as being large/powerful , coming across terrifying to the reader.

Question 5

“slounge”

Answer 5

sluggish/lazy intimidating tension.

Question 6

“where none should be”

Answer 6

rarity isolation, sees himself as more superior, MacCaig himself is naive.

Question 7

“(too often)”

Answer 7

parenthesis=tone shoft. humerous interjection. This is not an encounter that the poet wishes to repeat.

Question 8

“But not too often”

Answer 8

Contrast with stanza one, erratic thoughts. Contradicting what he has just said. Unlike what he states before we can see that it is an enriching and worthwhile experience.

Question 9

“I count as i gain”

Answer 9

enjambment -> sees experience to now be beneficial on the remainder of the poem.

Question 10

” That once I MET”

Answer 10

implies reciprocity, friendly, between humans and animals.

Question 11

“tin-tacked”

Answer 11

The whole sentence together is a metaphor “ on a sea tin-tacked with rain” -( aliterative metaphor) neat round imprints. onomateopia/ aliteration mimics rain and playful tone. The hard aliteration if the ‘t’ helps to show the hard rain hitting of the boat.

Question 12

“room sized monster” and “matchbox brain”

Answer 12

contrast, large and frightening, poet belittles its intelligence. There is also a clever use of long and short vowels in this last line too. The long vowels in “roomsized monster” appropriately extend and elongate the expression to reinforce the size of the shark in contrast to the short, clipped vowels of “matchbox brain”

Question 13

“He displaced more than water”

Answer 13

Has the ability to change thoughts. The poet being metaphorically displaced.

Question 14

“shoggled”

Answer 14

quick, effortless, playful. Takes him so far back.

Question 15

“centuries back”

Answer 15

emjambment –> mimics pause of time metaphor = reflecting

Question 16

“decadent townee”

Answer 16

recognices humans’ luxuries and he is self- depracating.

Question 17

“shook on the wrong branch of a family tree”

Answer 17

Humans evolved poorly. How he is literally and metaphorically shaken by his experience. He is reminded that the shark is part of our ancestors just like other animals are.

Question 18

“wrong branch”

Answer 18

slightly ambiguous and may be interpreted in two ways. Firstly because of our inherent sense of intellectual superiority over this creature we are unwilling to recognise we are in any way related.
Secondly, it is in fact humans who have gone “wrong” in their evolutionary path - it is humankind, not the shark which is the aberration, the “monster”.

Question 19

“swish up the dirt” (3 separate points needed)

Answer 19

• “swish”= sudden/chaotic. Metaphor -> experience has ability to cloud his thoughts.
• The “dirt” in this case is the murky thought of how humans evolved into what they now are.
• The idea of “dirt” in our origins continues with the choice of the word “slime” - the primeval slime from which we and all other living organisms were created. This links once more the evolution of humanity with that of the shark.

Question 20

“emerging”

Answer 20

The word “emerging” in the final line of this stanza reinforces this new, almost epiphanic sense of clarity associated with coming out of the dark into light.

Question 21

“everything”

Answer 21

The word “everything” again reinforces our similarity with every other species at the start of this process.

Question 22

“is all the clearer”

Answer 22

he now understands the shark more

Question 23

“so who’s the monster”

Answer 23

Realisation that the shark is not monstrous- humans are, contrasts with first impressions if the shark. All the bad things that the poet has said about the shark has been reversed such as “match box brain”

Question 24

“The thought made me grow pale”

Answer 24

the first line glides effortlessly into the second through the use of enjambment. feeling of sickness, shocked at his ideas of human superiority.

Question 25

“twenty seconds”

Answer 25

Brevity of experience, contrasts lasting impressions. - being the time the shark takes to pass him by

Question 26

“sail after sail”

Answer 26

elegance (metaphor for fins) graceful.referring to its fin and tail above the water. The metaphor comparing fin and tail to sails gives us the impression of vast surface areas and the shape is also nicely evoked.

Question 27

“slid away”

Answer 27

Shark oblivious to poets moment of clarity, smooth movement- contrast from stanza 1.

• No longer is it the clumsy, bulky creature of the opening lines but something graceful and elegant.
• This reinforces the change in the speaker - just as he now has a different view of himself, so too his opinion about the shark has been altered.

Question 28

“then the tail”

Answer 28

• elegance

- The poem ends on a question, readers are allowed to come up with there on conclusion of how the poem ends.