basking shark Flashcards
To stub
To have
Opens with an infinitive
- dramatic opening
- blunt opening
A rock
Hard, solid, rigid, unnatural
Slounge
Neologism
Onamatepia
- sense of immediacy
Sibilance - reflects water
(too often)
Parenthesis
Didn’t like it - negative
Too often
Contradiction
- Suggests worthwhile experience
- though enough
Punctuation fragments the sentence
Experience has left him confused about his feelings
Tin- tacked with rain
Metaphor - shape of drops falling in the sea. Alliteration onomatopoeia reflects sound of rain
That roomsized monster with a matchbox brain
Roomsized - big, large. Long vowel sound reflects this
Monster - prehistoric, dismissive of creature. Sees himself as superior
Alliteration adds to sense of disdain
He displaced more than water. He shoggled me
Displaced - disturb, shift, upset
More - the speakers mind
Shoggled - shake
Centuries back - this decadent townee
Centuries back - forces speaker to consider where humans + shark came from on evolutionary terms
Decadent - morale decay. Humanity is going bad
Shook on a wrong branch of his family tree
Word choice, disturbing, forced speaker to consider superiority
Wrong branch - if you go back far enough we are connected to ‘the monster’ . Humanity has taken a wrong turn
Family tree - thoughts going back to distant past
Swish up the dirt and, when it settles, a spring
Analogy. After some time has passed his thoughts have settled and he understands things better than before
Sibilance - reflects the disturbance
Is all the clearer. I saw me, in one fling
Is all the clearer - reflection. He sees things clearer now
Caesura, reflects his new moment of understanding
In one fling - vast amounts of time compressed
Slime
Primordial slime- all living creatures connected. Word choice- negative- destroys the concept of humans being superior
So who’s the monster?
Key idea in the poem
Rhetorical question - no answer given yet implications are clear - humans are monsters that are wrecking the planet. Epiphoric, sudden new understanding
Grow pale
Physical response to this new realisation, shock worry
For twenty seconds
Numerous addition he was easily able to get over his new concerns
Sail after sail
Metaphor - fin and tail resemble sails of a ship. Returns to the present
The tall fin slid away and then the tail
Assonce- conveys the size and grace of the creature as it moves
Themes
Humans are monsters, humanities place in the history of the world, challenging the idea that humans are top of the hierarchy
Structural points
Big idea comes at the end
Form
3 lines each, regular line length, meter and rhyme
Symbolic meaning
Real life encounter raises profound philosophical questions about humanity, suggests near admiration for the shark
