Loves Song, with Two Goldfish Essay

In the poem, (love song, with two gold look for) by Grace Chua, the author describes the development of a young romance between two goldfish with its consequential rise and fall using imagery and metaphors. From the title we can automatically meet what the poem will be about and the pargonnthesis give an image of the shape of the fishbowl, creating a setting. The title is non capitalized beca utilise it is not but a teaching, just now is in fact part of a story that is constantly evolving and has many aspects.Upon the first stanza, we immediately get the impression of unrequited love. In the first sentence, hes a drifter, always floating around her, he has nowhere else to go, we meet the two characters, him and her, and we encounter a lot of water imagery with manner of speaking such as drifter and floating. These words however give glowering the impression that hes alone and would be lost without her to follow. As if shes his everything. We get the impression though that hi s love for her is not returned when Chua says, he wishes she would sing, not much, just the scales.The reader can understand from the word wishes that her singing is not something often received and because he doesnt even want her to sing much, we can infer that his attention towards her is not reciprocated. However, I do not look that the fish is necessarily bitter about the circumstances because he uses humor when he says that he wishes she would give him the fish eye or sing just the scales. Because the characters are fish, the light-hearted metaphors offset the melancholy first sentence of unrequited love.Transitioning to the second stanza, we again see this fishbowl imagery. Just as the first stanza was in parenthesis, so is the second one, but now the reader gets the impression that the fish are in separate fishbowls when Chua says, Bounded by rounded walls she makes fish eyes and kissy lips at him. The word bounded gives the impression that she is trapped and being kept away from him, but we also learn that the feelings matt-up by the male goldfish are now felt by her as well. We also get a fun, flirtatious feel from this stanza which hints at a budding alliance.In response to him, she makes fish eyeskissy lipsdarts behind pebbles. I find the darting to be flirtatious because it hints at the caution she feels towards this new love, but as even pebbles are to a fault small for a goldfish to hide behind, it shows her tentative openness towards the budding romance. Finally at the end of the stanza it says she swallows his charms, hook, line and sinker. The metaphor for the fishing line imagery again adds humor, but it also alerts the reader that she has completely fallen in love with him an idea that progresses into the third stanza.Throughout the third stanza, we come across a certain ambiguity about whether the two goldfish are actually separate from one another. No longer are the two fish lonesome(prenominal) referred to as he and she but by the en d theyve become a they. Both fish are also referred to within the same parenthetical statement which hasnt occurred before this point. Unfortunately, they remained trapped in the bowl, and words such as could and would are scattered throughout the entire stanza. Depicting images of what the two would do if they could escape. unitary of the activities he describes is, he would take her to the ocean, they could count the waves.I trust that this phrase describes his feelings towards the family very well. Because hes with her and her company is all that matters to him, he doesnt need to go out and have lavish experiences. He says that, in the submarine silence, they would share their deepest secrets. The consonance here with the s sound helps progress their retirement from the rest of the the world along with the depth of their love with words such as submarine and deepest.The stanza ends with a simile stating that they would dive for pearls like stars. I think that the simile could have a much deeper meaning than them just diving to the bottom of the ocean. While the phrase could be seen as their love growing stronger and deeper, I see it as almost the opposite because of the constant usage of the words would and could in the stanza. The use of the heavens in love poems often give off the impression that love is infinite, but here they cant reach the heavens as they are trapped within the bowl. Their entrapment symbolizes the lack of growth in their relationship and how they have not been able to move past the initial flirtatiousness of new love.By the fourth stanza we have reached the end of the relationship, and it becomes apparent that the fish could be metaphors for a human relationship. The goldfish couldve been chosen to represent actual human beings because of the simplicity associated with a goldfishs character and the similarly simplistic relationship. The stanza opens with her polish the relationship, and fish-related death imagery becomes common w ith phrases such as belly-up, sinks like a fish and drowns. While in previous stanzas, the fish imagery added a humorous note, here they add a much darker tone where the dead-fish imagery becomes metaphoric to the death of the relationship.The reader can infer that the ex-lovers were in fact serviceman when Chua says, He drinks like a stone. Drowns these sorrows, stares emptily through glass. The word drown here might not be relating to the actual act of drowning, but to the act of acquiring drunk and possibly drowning his sorrows in liquor. As he stares emptily through the glass, the glass could symbolize both the fishbowl and the end of his drink, and the loneliness that would accompany both.Finally in the last stanza, we learn as to why the couple broke up, and the use of parenthesis plays a major role in exhibiting their distance- as if theyre in two separate fishbowls once again. This stanza is the shortest, and it goes, (the reason, she said/ she wanted)/(and he could not giv e)/ a life/beyond the/ (bowl). Here we see the two separate sides, and how she left him because she felt trapped within the relationship.This theme of entrapment is noticeable throughout the entire poem with the fishbowl imagery, along her desire to escape with the words would and could. When lines 26-27 dont use the parenthesis, it shows her dream of exploration and moving past the known realms of the fishbowl. The break-up was her escape from the binding fishbowl, and her ensuing freedom from the confining relationship.Throughout the poem, Chua described the evolution of a relationship from the bubbly excitement and tentativeness of new love, to its downfall from confinement and resulting break-up with emotions ranging from sorrow to freedom. Real human emotions are expressed through those of goldfish to express the simplicity of their relationship and to create a metaphor through the entrapment they must feel within the bowl.