Analysis of Watery Creature

About this poem

Mermaids are not nearly as docile in most cultures as they are portrayed most often today: singing lovely songs, which is the job of Sirens, and brushing their long hair, more likely Rapunzel; and instead, in rare cases they came to shore out of a longing for a normal life, wed a suitable adoring male and had a child as a loving wife, only to then disappear abruptly when the call of the sea, their original home, was too great; and in most cultures, they simply ate sailors ravenously after they fell overboard in choppy seas, or devoured young children who frolicking onshore foolishly got too close to the dangerous water despite parental warnings. The enstorying below entails the more peaceful variety, but does not complete it, for that is the job of another poem, poet, or reader to accomplish, that of the child leaving home to transform into a Mer-being once puberty strikes, thereby abandoning the distraught husband and father. more »