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Ash Poole
“Take This Fish and Look at It.” – Samuel Scudder

The story is about a professor who makes his student study a fish in a jar. The point of the story, I think is that too much detail is as bad as not enough. To describe the fish he simply had to identify that it was a ‘haemolons’, as soon as that is said the image is already in the reader’s head. This may be why the professor also did not allow him the use of a magnifying glass, saying to him, “a pencil is one of the best eyes.” The student was required then to draw the fish, this helped him become more observant.
The student was left basically to his own devices, with no real guidance. Every time the professor came back to see how everything was going there was no more help, the student was just told to look again. This became frustrating but definitely made the student learn. At first you read that the fish is a disgust for him, it smells terrible and he becomes bored after only ten minutes. However, toward the end of the story he describes the odor as “pleasant perfume,” this, I think helps define his new appreciation of how he is able to better observe the object in the jar.
The narrative is primarily to the point, Scudder does a good job of keeping on track, he does not stray off onto irrelevant topics. He is also able to make the mild objective of looking at the fish, come across to the reader as being a lot more dramatic. He does this by describing his own personal opinion and what he smelling.
Scudders use of listing and description of time, “Half an hour passed- an hour- another hour…” and “…ghastly: form behind, beneath, above, sideways, at three-quarters’ view – just as ghastly.” These methods are effective at re-creating his sense of boredom.
As Scudder uses a simple yet very descriptive detail of the fish, the readers are provided with a vivid image and sense of what it smells and looks like.
The use of...