Semipresencial Teachers – ANEP – CFE – Introduction to Literature / English

Name: Andrea Soledad Piantanida ID number: 4.019.654-4 Group: 04 Teacher: Graciela Bilat

THE FISHERMAN AND HIS SOUL (by Oscar Wilde)

In a time in which morality and ethics were determined by just a few, Oscar Wilde could never show
himself freely at other’s sight. He lived his life been a prisoner of his desires and I think that he begins
to release some personal aspects which tormented him throughout his short stories, fairy tales, and
novels. “The Fisherman and his soul” fairy tale is one of them. Those tales share most of the features of
short stories, we can also find a setting which relies on the author’s imagination, with the main conflict
somehow related to universal problems. What would you do for love? is one of the themes that we find
along with this story. Its main character shows us the different things he puts aside, tolerates and
sacrifices in order to be with his loving mermaid.

Although the fisherman character is one of the main, he is mostly ‘flat’, not much information about
him is given in the story apart from his determination to love that beautiful mermaid. The author’s use
of similes and repetitions support the fisherman’s determination and makes it more memorable and vivid
for the reader: “Her hair was yellow like gold; her body was white like ivory; her tail like silver and
pearl; and her ears like seashells.” Along with the story, we can see that despite the fact of changing his
mind about the mermaid at the beginning of the story, he remains mainly ‘static’, the rest of it. His love
for that mermaid stays unchanged.

The character of the soul starts gaining notoriety and ‘dynamism’ after the mermaid asks the fisherman
to send it away in order to possess her love. It becomes an important character in the story if not the
main one. The use of personification regarding the soul is exposed so wisely that while we read, we start
picturing the soul as a human entity, it speaks, it thinks and it even sees…: “After a year, the soul came
down to the sea and called the young fisherman.” “The soul answered, ‘Come nearer. I want to speak
to you because I saw marvelous things’.”. This character experiments several internal changes along
with the story, it is capable of doing everything in its power to be part of its owner again.

The character of the priest is so devoted to his religion and its moral rules that becomes deeply blind
and, as a result, he cannot stand other kinds of love apart from the regular ones: “The people of the sea
are lost creatures. They are like the beasts of the fields.” He tries to persuade him… human beings are
not supposed to fall in love with them. Meanwhile, the character of the witch shows us how personal
desires could interfere in others’ lives and exposes her envy when doing the spell in her cage: “He must
be mine. I am as beautiful as she is”.

I think that the moral of this story is that in the end, we all look for love. It is not important which one
its form is. All in all, as the young fisherman says “Love is better” … than anything else.