When I first read the title of this poem, I expected it to be a mournful address of those who sacrificed their lives for the victory of the Union. But instead it opens with a description of the aquarium, and how the speaker remembers being a child and was pressed up against the glass, looking at the fish swim by. It is five stanzas in that the statue is first mentioned, the one that commemorates Colonel Robert Shaw.
What I found this poem to represent was that even though so many died for the Union side, and even though it was a Union victory in the end there is no proper commemoration. Even though what Shaws did was revolutionary, leading an African-American regiment, now all that remains of him is a statue that is ignored by the populous of today. The populous of today is no different than the fish that the speaker watched as a child.
The last stanza brings it all together:
"The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease."
The first thought that comes to mind after the first sentence is that the physical building may be gone, but the 'fish' are still here, just moving along in large schools of fish, looking towards the future for survival. There is no looking back on the past, but the 'servility' of people today just forces us forward and doesn't allow us to respect those who have given up their lives for us to have the freedoms we enjoy today. Instead, it seems like something we try to avoid, for it is "like a fishbone/ in the city's throat." It still seems to apply to today, this idea of not respecting those who have given much more than they need to in order for the rest of us to live on.
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2 comments:
I think the emphasis of the poem is on the decay of the republic that Shaw's men died saving.
The viewer is looking into a tank, cage, or screen behind which he can see that decay or corruption of humanity, symbolized by the "dark and downward vegetating kingdom of the fish and reptile."
The poem states that "Two months after marching through Boston half the regiment was dead" and now the monument stands outside the gates of a construction site fueled by corruption that is ripping the city apart, and an old city landmark, the aquarium, that is slowly falling apart, while the codfish symbol of the city is discintigrating. The fact that "the monument sticks like a fishbone in the city's throat" serves to point out that the city and the government that these men died for is decaying.
Racism and violence is also explored in the poem. The image of the bubble, or the balloon is used to portray the tension of injustice in the world that the speaker wishes to break. He references wishing to pop the bubbles behind the glass at the aquarium as a child, then the faces of negro school children during segregation looking like balloons behing the television screen, and finally Colonel Shaw rides a bubble and waits for the "blessed break," perhaps of the bonds of segregation and violence.
Another part I thought was interesing was the similarity of the lines "the ditch is nearer," and "space is closer." These lines point out the speaker's frustration with seperation. The ditch is nearer than the monument because the ditch is closer to the truth of the speaker's view of the world. There aren't even any monuments "for the last war here" so the ditch is appropriate for the times, yet clearly an inappropriate monument. The "Rock of the Ages" that survived the bombing of Hiroshima also becomes a sort of monument. When the speaker says "the moon is closer" he is maybe referencing moonrocks. The alein terrien of space is closer to him than this cold monument shown to him in a "commercial photograph." Such a cold inadequate monument for such atrocity.
Finally, the corruption of the world as the speaker sees is it emphasized in the last stanza where corrupt humans are compared to cars resembling sharks sliding through grease. Their way is made easier. And mankind has become a "savage servility" to this corruption and the segregation and violence it breeds.
I also thought that the ending of thepoem was an excellent way to pull the peice together. What i was especially interested in was the idea of fish an animal that lives in water and grease.The grease shows the pollution of the "kingdom" and does so most powerfully by having a black substance enter the scene.The grease pushes things forward but only further through its own thick darkness. Shaw in one word is able to encapsulate and repeat the society's inablity to do anything but slide forward.
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