"The porpoises" by John Gurney has an interesting beginning "Plutarch would have called it suicide". At first you have no idea what this beginning means, but as you read further you come to comprehend that the writer is referring to the porpoises, and how they led themselves to suicide by drifting to close to the shore. The first ten lines of the poem are generally about how the porpoises came to be stranded and why they were stranded.
The writer creates a sad complexion of words to describe the circumstances; he uses words such as abandoned, beached, squealing and darkness to enforce this. Powerful sentences are also used to create sentiment such as " Here they lay (porpoises) bleeding, overheating, as their calls went whistling to each other through the sea, the free ones swimming back towards the lost till they were stranded, and the men came wading from the village, torches high to finish them with cleavers.
Porpoise
"Rooster tail" spray around swimming Dall's porpoi...
Lightened version of Image:Marsvin (Phocoena phoco...After all, such creatures were the gift of providence, pig-fish from the ocean, porpoises, their blunt head and counter-shaded sides sent in to feed the village." This sentence also gives the impression that the men were vicious; they considered the porpoises to be a gift of providence, sent to them just for the sole purpose of food.
In my opinion, the writer feels guilt for the death of the porpoises; he describes porpoises as very gentle, caring creatures, which resemble harmless young children on the deep and save drowning men by pushing them towards the surface. In the sense that porpoises posed no threat to humans, but people killed them for food anyway, due to the times being hard. The writer tries to amend the guilt by releasing the porpoises back into the sea.
Beautiful imagery is used throughout the...