My Little Workshop "Little Workshop for a little me." Jensons1

22愛的鼓勵 0訂閱站台

Analytical paper #4
Analysis of the essay “Look at Your Fish” by Samuel Scudder
11/21/05

An Analysis of “Look at Your Fish”

In Samuel Scudder’s essay “Look at Your Fish,” he narrats his first encounter with Professor Agassiz for an expressive purpose. In the beginning of the story, he meet Professor Agassiz, a natural history professor. Then he was asked to carefully look at a fish called haemulon for two days. From time to time the professor would come around and ask Scudder what he had found. Every time Scudder told the professor all he had found, the professor would not be satisfied. Instead, he asked for further inspection on the fish. Scudder also describes how this experience helped him later in his study of insects.

The expressive purpose of this essay is obvious. It is a story based on the writer’s own experience fifteen years ago. He claims his identity in the essay by “… and told him I had enrolled my name in the Scientific School as a student of natural history.” He also expresses his reason of entering the school as “be well grounded in all departments of zoology, I proposed to devote myself specially to insects.” From the sentence “I had a bad memory” we get to know that he is a person who can hardly memorize anything. Besides, Scudder wrote about his emotion throughout the story. He expresses how he was excited when he had to rehydrate the fish for fear that it would dry out: “This little excitement over, nothing was to be done but to return to a steadfast gaze at my mute companion.” By the phrase “with a feeling of depression,” he expressed how he felt towards the prolonged assignment. He had a struck of a “happy thought”, it was to “draw the fish; and now with surprise.” After the professor’s criticism of his limited observation, he felt being “piqued” and “mortified.” In the essay his evaluation is also present. For example, Scudder values entomology as “a cleaner science then ichthyology.” And in the middle of the essay his opinion towards his counting of the scales is “nonsense.” Moreover, he values this lesson by “This is the best entomological lesson I ever had,” and that the lesson was “of inestimable value which we could not buy, with which we cannot.” Subjective language is also used in the essay. He uses “huge neckless glass bottles with their leaky, wax-besmeared corks, half-eaten by insects, and begrimed with cellar dust” to describe the preserve bottles in those days. And he also dubs the fish as “sacred precincts.” “That wretched fish” was another name when he was fed up of the investigation.

Literary characteristics also exist in the essay. The theme and artistic unity are clear; this is a story of a student who was assigned to inspect a fish by his new professor. From the phrase “It was fifteen years ago that I entered the laboratory of Professor Agassiz…” to the end when he found that this experience was the most precious, the theme is outstanding: to tell a story out of his own experience. The plot of the story is tightly connected at each part. The characters of the professor as well as the student are also apparent. The professor was a person who searched for facts with all effort. “You have not looked very carefully; why,” and “but that’s not all; go on” was his insistence of thorough inspection; not only did he insist on searching for real facts, he also wanted his students to do so. The student’s character is also obvious. He was obedient. He did what he was asked to do “for three days,” even it was just a close inspection of a fish with no “artificial aid.” When he was asked to go back home and think without the fish, he really did and came up with a new catalog: “Do you perhaps mean that the fish has symmetrical sides with paired organs?” Verisimilitude is present as the writer places various dialogues of the conversation between him and Professor Agassiz in the essay, such as “When do you wish to begin,” and “I am certain I do not, but I see how little I saw before.” Tension is created as the professor told Scudder, “but I won’t hear you from now; put away your fish and go home; perhaps you will be ready with a better answer in the morning.” This is because the professor asked for more when the writer thought he had all the discoveries. Aesthetic language usage is also present in the essay to further the second purpose of literary. The writer uses similes and metaphors such as “… when they discovered that no amount of eau-de-Cologne would drawn the perfume which haunted me like a shadow” and “a pencil is one of the best of eyes.”

Narration pattern can be clearly seen. The potential of the event is set up when Scudder entered the laboratory and was asked when he wanted to start the lesson, he said “Now,” And then the professor “reached from a shelf a huge jar of specimens in yellow alcohol.” Disturbance is created when the professor said “Take this fish and look at it… by and by I will ask you what you have seen.” Scudder then began to look at the fish as instructed. As the writer “began to discover new features in the creature,” a conflict occurs as the professor “waited as if expecting more, and then, with an air of disappointment,” he asked his new student to continue his inspection. Crisis is present when the writer was miserable and went home, “with my two perplexities.” At the end of the essay, the student finally had a great leap by discovering that “the fish has symmetrical sides with paired organs.” Having done this, the student could “could point out the resemblances and differences between the two [haemulons].”

The second pattern is evaluation. This only appears at the end of the essay when the writer discovered that that was the most important lesson he had ever had. The subject was a lesson in which the writer was asked to looks closely at a fish and report what he had seen afterwards. And the judgment is that “This was the best entomological lesson I ever had” and “this outside experience has been of greater value than years of later investigation in my favorite groups.” The criteria the writer has given are “best” and “of greater value.”

In Samuel Scudder’s “Look at Your Fish,” he tells a story of his first encounter with a natural history professor, Professor Agassiz, with an expressive purpose. Through narration he described the first lesson, from his confusion about the professor’s instructions to the fully understanding of an entire family of fish. This essay is an interesting one which is about the hard work of a student who gets a lot of knowledge through careful examination with patience.