Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1957

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Death

Death permeates the poem from open to close. But more than just death, the poem deals with the contrast between life and death. This is evident in the first stanza when a lengthy and lively description of the fish’s life contrasts with the abruptness of its body “lying in front of me / dead” (Lines 9-10). The beginning of the final stanza echoes this movement to death in an inverted order: “Dead / in front of me” (Lines 52-53). In each instance, Neruda isolates the word “dead” by placing it alone in a line; this exaggerate death’s power while the speaker confronts it. Even if the tuna occupies many lines of the poem with its liveliness and movement, death comes crashing down and destroys all of it with one simple, blunt word.

Neruda closes the poem with the image of death, calling the fish’s current location “the waters of death” (Line 85). The end of the poem almost offers a sense of hope as the tuna seems to embody a new state of existence in death. In this existence, the speaker once again defines the tuna by its fluid movement through the water, almost as if it has regained a piece of itself by exiting the land of men it occupied earlier in the poem.

As a metaphor, this poem speaks to the power of death. If death can so suddenly and easily take out the majestic and powerful tuna, then death is a power unmatched that all must respect.

Nature

Comparable to how the poem contrasts death and life, the poem also contrasts the natural world with the human world. In the natural world, the tuna is king. It has the power of a gun or any other human weapon. It moves as fast as a ship. It is as sacred as a majestic bird. It is home in the darkest depths of unexplored areas of the world.

Yet upon the land, in the domain of man, the tuna becomes the main course beside a host of lifeless vegetables. It is something people buy, sell, and consume. It has lost its agency and power.

In one way, this is the natural course of existence. All things die. All creatures have natural predators, and some eventually become dinner.

But in another way, this progression from predator to prey is sad. Because Neruda describes the tuna in such a personal and human way, its death comes as a shock—almost like witnessing the death of a main character in a novel or film.

The duality of understanding this natural death and feeling sad about it corresponds with the other contrasting ideas in the poem, and it helps to create an uneasy mood. The tone of this poem is melancholy, yet it is a celebratory ode. The imagery is lively yet still. The poem is alive and dead.

Everything in the poem focuses on the opposing forces of life, speaking to the natural state of things: There are always opposites, dualities, and binaries in nature, and the poem speaks to these in a complex, intricate way.

Violence

A third notable contrast in the poem is the way the live tuna is a tool of violence while the dead tuna is the victim of violence. This theme aligns with a Marxist reading of the poem that views the commodification and consumption of the tuna in a grotesque way. It’s not innately awful that the tuna is dead; it’s awful that the tuna dies to become an object for people to buy and sell. Death itself is not tragic, but the reasoning behind death can be.

Neruda prefaces the violence of the tuna’s murder by using violent imagery to describe it. By comparing the tuna to various weaponry and other war-like imagery, the poem invokes violence. The tuna, while alive, is a predator. It inspires fear. It is capable of inflicting harm on other animals. But as a commodity sold in the market, it is as dangerous as a limp vegetable.

The reader must pause and wonder about the amount of violence necessary to take down such a predator. The thought of this results in the image of man: the ultimate apex predator. But even more horrific, according to the poem, is that mankind does not utilize its prey the way any other animal does. Man does not simply eat the prey he catches; instead, man turns his prey into an object to display in order to sell.

This is a different kind of violence from that of which the tuna is capable. This kind of violence feels unnatural and dirty. It is an inversion of nature. Neruda, as the poet, recognizes this and dedicates his poetic vision to the victim of the scene, choosing an ode to romanticize and glorify a target of mankind’s market system.