Ruby Maher
English 9
The Sea Devil
- The man goes fishing by night because he likes the loneliness and the labour of it. He likes the feeling of being a solitary hunter. His desire to go out fishing alone at night is what gets him into big trouble. He almost loses his life trying to survive his encounter with the giant ray because he is alone in the dark with no one there to help him. The man does not fish for a living, so he really doesn’t need to go out in the dark to fish.
2. Foreshadowing:
- The author tells the reader in the beginning of the story that porpoise are the man’s friend. In the end, it’s a porpoise that saves him from the sea devil.
- A school of sardines surfaces near the boat as though something had frightened them. The man does not know at this point that the giant sea ray is frightening the sardines.
- The author tells the reader that the man liked “the harsh tug of the retrieving rope around his wrist.” Little did he know that the rope would be the one thing that almost kills him.
3. The complicating incident is when the man sees the two swirling, dark pools near the boat. He thinks there are two mullet swimming under the surface. He casts his net out towards what he thinks are the mullet and nets a giant sea ray and gets pulled into the water by the rope attached to his wrist.
A single crisis is when the man is being dragged out further and deeper I into the bay and realizes he only has moments to live.
The climax is when with the help of the porpoise hitting the sea ray with his tail, the man is able to swim ahead of the ray to tie the rope around the barnacle encrusted stake. He hopes when the sea ray lunges forward again, the rope with break on the stake to set him free.
The resolution is when the rope breaks free and the man swims back to his small boat.
The ending is a happy ending in the sense that the man did not die. He lets the dying mullet go free because he is a changed man. He knows what it is like to be hunted and trapped. He vows not to go fishing alone at night ever again.
4. Civilized: bring (a place or people) to a stage of social, cultural, and moral development considered to be more advanced.
Primitive: relating to, denoting, or preserving the character of an early stage in the evolutionary or historical development of s s something.
When the author refers to the plane and the causeway he is referring to how modernized man has become. Even when he talks about how the man has job that where he doesn’t have to rely on hunting for his food. He has a job where he uses his head instead of his hands. The wife at home represents the safety that man thinks he has created for himself in his civilized world. The irony of this story is that no matter how “civilized” or modern man has become he can’t win against the “primitive” strength and power of nature.
5. The man learns at the end of the story that he should never underestimate the power of nature. He also learns how it feels to be trapped and fighting his life. In the end, he lets the dying mullet in the bottom of his boat go free because how helpless it feels.
6. Examples of Figurative Language:
Somewhere out in the channel the porpoise blew, with a sounds like steam escaping. P. 33
The night was black as a witch’s cat, the stars looked fuzzy and dim. P. 34
A school of sardines surfaced, suddenly, skittering along like drops of mercury. P. 36
Vocabulary
- Sullen: bad-tempered and sulky; gloomy.
- Weltering: move in a turbulent fashion. 3
- Elemental:(of an emotion) having the primitive and inescapable character of a force of nature.
- Sinewy: Tough and difficult to cut, stringy.
- Hoisted: To raise something by using ropes and strength
- Phosphorescence: Luminescence that is caused by the absorption of radiations.
- Cordage: The ropes in the rigging of a ship or boat.
- Exhilaration: Feeling of great happiness and excitement.
- Atavistic: A recurrence to a past style, manner, outlook or activity.
- Centrifugal: To move away from the center of something.
- Gauntly: Barren, desolate.
- Impeding: To slow the movement, progress or action of something.
- Tenaciously: Very determined to do something.
- Respite: A period of temporary delay.
- Equilibrium: A state of balance, one force is not stronger than the other.
- Imminent: Something that is about to happen very soon.