¨The abused Aegean¨
talking about dolphins so may be a personification of them.
Smiling
Symbolism
Negative feeling
Something failed
Frustraition
Sense of loss, maybe loss of hope, that they didnt see what they were expecting to
Disapointment
Maybe it means pollution, or contamination, all the damage that man does to the world
¨chains¨
Suggest an imprisonment
Down us we have ¨black water¨ that give us a sinking feeling
Instead of raising up our spirits as Gods that are up, we have this sinking feeling as we were going down and down, they are sunk
We can guess that this word added the hold sentence, give us a nnegative feeeling of going down or maybe something holding us
This negative feel can symbolism that something it isn´t working as it should
Dolphins
they were strongly associated with Poseidon by the later Greeks, this probably explains why the sea god was so often surrounded by dolphins
Wating for dolphins is a religiuos and spiritual experience for some people, also for some people its something memoral, like an experience that they will never forget
Experiences that people expect to have at the moment of watching the dolphins. Also this vocabulary makes a religious atmosphere or semanthic field in the poem
Watching for Dolphins
by: David Constantine
Structural Devices
It is set in the ¨summer moths¨ in ¨Piraeus¨.
It is diveded in 6 stanzas
Vocabulary
Religion
¨gong and drumb¨
things that religious people use to celebrate to a God
¨epiphany¨
A long time ago, when people that didn´t belive in God, have a dream in which Christ appears it was an epiphany and after that they started belive in God
God manifestation
¨implored¨
the big fat man was kind of praying god to picture of dolphins
(no matter that people usually implore only for miracles)
¨saint¨
Its the big bat man trying to picture of dolphins
In the poem, there are some words that make reference to religion
Literary Devices
Repetition
¨One¨
Pronoun repetition
Sibilance
¨In the summer months on every crossing to Piraeus One noticed that certain passengers soon ros.¨
Sound image
gong and drum.
We can see it as a sound image because they are objects created to make noise, and we know that they are use to celebrate God, so we guess that they can be makeing noise
Onomatopeia
¨the sky would clang¨
Personification
Similies
¨Stared like a sain¨
As if the ¨fat men¨it was a sain
Semantic Field
In the poem we can appresiete a lor of vocabulary that make reference to religion, all they create a semantic field based in religion,
Themes
Nature, Spirituality And Connections
When it says ¨Chains¨and ¨black water¨
The ¨chains¨ may suggest an imprisionment, but also we have ¨black water¨ and we can have this sinking feeling
In the title we have the word ¨dolphins¨, however its mentions a few times along the poem.
¨Dolphins¨ are a symbol of spiritualy for one part, because they appear in many greek miths. For example in Poseidon.
The narrator uses a lot of religious vocabulary. As ïmplored¨,¨saint¨, ¨pray¨ or ¨epiphany¨.
This are experiences that believed people used to have. (As I said in vocabulary part)
Power of imagination
The passengers imagine the experience of seeing dolphins
No matter that later they get dissapointed by the way that they couldn´t saw dolphins
¨Smiling, snub-nosed, domed like satyrs, oh¨
The power that our imagination have, that we sometimes imagine things before they happened
Also imagination it is how turist thouth that they were going to spent the day, that they would met dolphins but surprised, any dolphin appeared.
In my opinion, the author uses this key (imagination) as a way of represent us the usual deceptions that we afront in the normal life. In this case, is the decpcion that the turists feelt when they go back to their places without watching the dolphins.
Impacts of man in nature creation
¨black water¨
It can be interpretated as all the damage that man causes to ature, pollution, contamination
