A Sea of Poor Fish

The jawbone represents the end of a period of suffering. With the death of the the sea creature who the jawbone belonged to symbolizes the end of a depression. Seeing the jawbone reminds the narratiator of the cold truths that come along with the jawbone. The crabs and dogfish represent the poor who can never manage to get ahead. The waves of water wash the fish ashore leaving them in the sand unable to breath as the waves of taxes and prices leave people barley able to afford food to eat and clothes to wear. Hughes says that these fish turn to crust and then continue at the beginning. This means that this is a cycle that will continue for the children born of these people and probably their grandchildren and so on. The "jaws" or the government takes everything from its people and causes them to suffer. "Time in the sea eats its tail, thrives, casts these Indigestibles, the spars of purposes That failed far from the surface." I interpreted this to mean that the people who cannot support themselves are cast out of society or left for dead. These people have no purpose and are not considered to be a functioning part of society. They are considered disposable. When Hughes says that they failed far from the surface hes saying that these people failed far before they were born because they born into poverty, in other words they didn't have a chance from the start. "None grow rich In sea." In most societies it is almost impossible to move out of the class one was born in. The 1930's was a time of depression and unemployment I feel that this poem is comparing The jaws of a creature to the jaws of the government. The gripping in the end of the poem leads me to believe that the ways of this creature still effect the sea even in death. So maybe if the poem represents a depression Hughes is saying here that even though the depression is over its effects on the people are still present.

The dark intestine means that over time the story or Adam and Eve has been retold and re-written millions of different times. Each person adding to or subtracting from parts of the story that he or she didn't like or thought might make the tale more interesting. The truth is swallowed in the dark intestine. The way Hughes tells the story is completely different from the tale in Genesis. Originally Eve was supposed to be the one who ate from the tree of life and she convinced Adam to do the same. In Theology, Adam ate the apple and Eve ate Adam and the serpent ate Eve. Hughes is saying that the truths of the words were probably lost over time because of all the re-telling and how things tend to change in meaning from the translation into other languages. The serpent laughs because of the confusion. The dark intestine is where the truth is but no one knows where to find it. Each generation and each denomination has probabley had some influence on the bible and the stories that they choose to accept as the truth.