The Shark :: Literary Analysis, E.J Pratt

In The Shark by EJ Pratt, the poet tends to use he when referring to the shark. The poet overly describes the shark in a way that leads us to call that the shark is a symbol representing war. The poet suggests this by exploitation metal descriptions of the shark such as sheet iron, three-cornered, knife-edge, tubular and metallic greyness (4-6, 10, 19-20). So it could be that the poet is doing this to associate the shark with weapons used as war regrettably the association of metal in the poem. In my version, the shark is she rather than he. This changes the meaning of the poem. The meaning that I am trying to send to the readers is how women tend to think of each other. In the pilot version, the poet associates the shark with metal description. In my version, the metal descriptions as mentioned above are now pennant flag, silvery grey, keen-edge and cannular (4-6, 10, 19-20). Women are different from men. They do not use violence to solve matters, but rather they use their wor ds and intelligence. When using these words, you can touch the change of tone from a harder tone to a softer one which is similar to the difference of violence and words. In line 15, the shark snaps at a flat-fish. In my version also line 15, the shark only glowers because females are not as aggressive as males. Females tend to look down upon other females bonnie as the shark is doing in the poem.Throughout The Shark by EJ Pratt, the poet places a lot of trenchant diction such as leisurely, stirred, snapped, crummy, shearing and lithely (2, 7, 15,17,23-25). These words are effective due to their tone and meaning. Comparing snapped to glowered, glowered has a less dangerous tone (15). In my version, replacing all the effective diction changes the tone of the poem. In the original version, the poet describes the shark in a way that guides us to believe that the shark is an impenetrable, fearless and powerful creature using metal descriptions of the shark such as sheet iron, three- cornered, knife-edge, tubular and metallic grey (4-6, 10, 19-20).With the changes of the diction, the feeling is no longer at that place and now creates a feminine feeling of the shark, where the shark seems less terrifying due to different wording such as lithely to slenderly (24). In the original version, there is repetition of the word leisurely which is now casually (2, 25).