Giuseppe Roderick Ford

The Law Concerning Mermaids Kei Miller (This poem criticises Empires (namely the British Empire) and their desire to categorise, control and posses, in so doing leaving the world a lesser place.) Extract: The law concerning mermaids only caused mermaids to pass a law concerning man: that they would never again cross our boundaries of sand; never again lift their torsos up from the surf; never again wave at sailors, salt dripping from their curls; would never again enter our dry and stifling world.

First Reading What are the possible significances of the mermaid? What tone is created and how? Identify the one simile used in the poem? Is it significant? What do you notice about the use of adjectives? How many lies are there in the poem? What doe this say about the nature of guilt? What is the significance of the final word?

Deeper reading Historical realism is blended with fairy-tale to explore the darker side of human behaviour. How? The mermaid is symbolic of an outsider/enemy. She is denied humanity, her physical difference supposedly indicates mental incapacity and provided an excuse for what they do. This is the same argument of the Nazis and other totalitarian regimes intent on establishing racial superiority. However the perpetrators are lying to themselves. She was married – the perpetrators are most disturbed by her wedding ring – she had crossed over into the human world of love. The violence against her is carried out by key members of the community, most disturbingly the doctor, but no-one intervenes, including the narrator’s uncle, they stand back and watch. The collective guilt is carried by the next generation as reflected in the narrator’s need to retell the story.

My uncle Giuseppe told me that in Sicily in World War Two, in the courtyard behind the aquarium, where the bougainvillea grows so well, the only captive mermaid in the world was butchered on the dry and dusty ground by a doctor, a fishmonger, and certain others. She, it, had never learned to speak because she was simple, or so they’d said. But the priest who held one of her hands while her throat was cut, said she was only a fish, and fish can’t speak. But she screamed like a woman in terrible fear.

And when they took a ripe golden roe from her side, the doctor said this was proof she was just a fish and anyway an egg is not a child, but refused when some was offered to him. Then they put her head and her hands in a box for burial and someone tried to take her wedding ring, but the others stopped him, and the ring stayed put. The rest they cooked and fed to the troops. They said a large fish had been found on the beach.

Starvation forgives men many things, my uncle, the aquarium keeper, said but couldn’t look me in the eye, for which I thank God.