16 pages • 32 minutes read
Howard NemerovThe Goose Fish
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1977A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Sex and Guilt
The poem starts out as an idyllic scene: on the shore by moonlight, a couple cannot contain their passion for each other. They make love on the sand and for a short while they are in an ecstasy of delight. They feel like they have entered a kind of paradise, or that paradise has embraced them. It does not take long, however, for discomforting feelings, such as embarrassment, shame, and guilt to make their presence felt. When they feel “embarrassed in each other’s sight” (Line 13) they resemble Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden after they have eaten the apple and become aware that they are naked (book of Genesis, chapter 3). They are ashamed and try to hide from God, who will soon expel them from paradise for their disobedience. In the case of the unnamed couple in the poem, the accuser is not God but the dead goose fish. When it shows up, it is as if “the world has found them out” (Line 16), and their guilt and shame is on full view. One aspect of the fish’s appearance, which is both “peaceful and obscene” (Line 29), reflects the double consciousness of the lovers regarding their love and the sexual expression of it. It made them feel at home in their world, it gave them peace, but within a short while they felt shame about it. Their only defense against this feeling of shame is to interpret the goose fish in the most positive light possible. Ignoring its repulsiveness, they focus only on the seeming smile, which they interpret as an acceptance of their love. The fish is declared to be an “optimist” (Line 36) and they adopt him, as if he is a good luck charm, although the poem is silent on whether this strategy restores the joy they experienced on the beach under moonlight in the first stanza.
Rejection or Marginalization
The poem says little about the two lovers. The reader is left to wonder why they feel guilty about expressing their love. Is theirs, perhaps, an adulterous relationship, in which one or both partners are married, but not to each other? Or might they both be very young, two Romeo and Juliet characters, very much in love but defying the wishes of their families? Other possibilities might occur to the contemporary reader that might not have been so obvious when the poem was published in 1955. They could, for example, be a same-sex couple, or a minority couple, or an interracial couple. A hint of this couple’s relationship to the wider world or the society in which they live is contained in the lines that refer to their lovemaking alone on the sand, which was “The only way that could be known / To make a world their own” (Lines 26-27). This might suggest they have been marginalized or otherwise rejected in the society in which they live. They do not feel they belong, so in making love alone on the shore they are creating a world just for themselves in which they can flourish. Yet they also have feelings of guilt, as if they have internalized society’s judgment against them and cannot fully throw it off even when they are alone together. In this sense, the hideous appearance of the goose fish, “Most ancient and corrupt and grey” (Line 20), might symbolize the negative forces of society that the couple is still aware of, even in this otherwise idyllic setting. The grotesque fish would thus symbolize society’s interest in shaming the lovers for going beyond or outside its social norms. In this line of thought, the grin of the fish might be interpreted as a mocking grin, although that is not the interpretation that the couple ultimately decides upon.
Optimism and Pessimism
With its ironic tone and tongue-in-cheek playfulness, the poem is reluctant to yield up definitive meanings. The mood of the couple, and their perception of their own situation, varies during the course of the poem. It seems like eventually they opt for an optimistic view, but no firm conclusion is reached, and the ending of the poem might be seen as undercutting that optimism.
At first, they are clearly intoxicated by their own love; they feel no shadow in their lives. Their love turns what might otherwise have been an “ordinary night” (Line 5) into something special, and for a while, they are living in their own, self-created, blissful world. The euphoric feelings quickly wear off, however, and they are compelled to confront more difficult emotions, likely regarding their position in the community in which they live. It is easier for them to be happy when they are alone. When self-consciousness and guilt set in, they veer from optimism to a more pessimistic attitude, with hints of an “us against them” attitude (“Embarrassed in each other’s sight / But still conspiring hand in hand” [Lines 13-14]), as if they can triumph just by sticking together. Then they are faced with the presence of the dead goose fish, and they toy with how to interpret what they regard as its symbolic importance. Although the fish is a “comedian” (Line 31), and his “wide and moony grin” (Line 28) might be interpreted in any number of ways, the lovers appear to choose optimism over pessimism, declaring the fish to be an “optimist” (Line 36) and adopting him as their “patriarch” (Line 37).
The ending of the poem, however, might suggest a more pessimistic conclusion, and it is nothing to do with the fish. The moon goes down “Along the still and tilted track / That bears the zodiac” (Lines 44-45). In other words, the moon cannot deviate from its appointed, cyclic course through the zodiac. If the same predestined laws apply to the lovers, they may not be able to escape the turning of time and fate and whatever it may have in store for them.
