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READ THIS
A penguin has been caught in an oil slick which has threatened him with death. He has been lucky,
however, for he has been cleaned up and is now being set free. His anxieties nevertheless persist.
ABOUT THE POET
Ruth Miller was born in 1919 at Uitenhage in the Eastern Cape.
She was apparently deserted by her father, whereupon she and her mother moved onto a farm with an
aunt, probably in what was then the Northern Transvaal -- now the Northern Province of South Africa.
She was educated at a convent school before moving to Johannesburg where she would spend most of
her adult life. There she became involved in school education, first as a secretary and later as a teacher
of English.
Her poetry has been described as invoking a "note of tragedy", probably influenced by the untimely
death of her teenage son in 1962.
She herself would die of cancer in 1969, just seven years later. She was just 50 years of age.
The poem "Penguin on the Beach" was written during the late 1960s, and portrays the impact on
a penguin of being caught in an oil-slick with its dreadful threat of extinction of whole colonies of sea-life.
Have you looked at the questions
in the right column?
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TEST YOURSELF!
Read the left column and then answer
the following questions:
"But close within his head's small knoll, and dark
He retains the image: Oil on sea,
Green slicks, black lassoos of sludge
Sleeving the breakers in a strain-spread scarf."
[Need help?]
A "knoll" is a "small, round shape". It is most often used to describe a rounded hill. It is
therefore an ideal description of the penguin's head which is small and rounded.
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- Why does the poet add the parenthesis "and dark" to the description of the
knoll? (4)
[Need help?]
The most obvious reason is that the penguin's head is black in colour, and therefore looks like a dark
knoll.
Is the poet also hinting that the penguin's head is harbouring black thoughts about the pollution and the
resultant destruction -- and about human beings?
The poet does, after all, speak immediately of the image of this pollution as a memory in the penguin's
head.
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- Comment on the imagery contained in the words "Oil on sea, green slicks, black lassoos of sludge
sleeving the breakers in a strain-spread scarf." (10)
[Need help?]
These words are loaded with imagery.
First, there is the use of sibilance which is the repetition of the "s" sound: "sea, slicks, lassoos,
sludge, sleeving, breakers, strain-spread scarf".
What is the purpose of this sibilance? It creates a hissing sound, possibly of the waves hissing over the
sand. But it is also the sound of warning and the sound of disgust.
A "lassoo", on the other hand, is a rope to trap animals like horses and cattle. It is therefore an
instrument of capture, an instrument of bondage.
In this case, the oil slick is like such a rope -- long strands of black slick -- which captures and kills the
unfortunate sea-birds.
Notice too the references to garments: the waves have "sleeves" of oil, "scarves" of oil.
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"He shudders now from the clean flinching wave,
Turns and plods back up the yellow sand,
Ineffably wary, triumphantly sad."
- Why should the wave be a "flinching wave"? (4)
[Need help?]
This is a wonderful example of what is called a transferred epithet. It is not the wave that flinches
but rather the penguin which flinches from the wave.
And the penguin, says the poet, flinches from the wave in fear that this wave too is polluted with oil.
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- Why should the penguin be said to be "ineffably wary" and "triumphantly
sad"? (4)
[Need help?]
"Ineffably" means "too great to be expressed in words". The poet cannot express how wary
the penguin is after having been so nearly destroyed by the oil slick.
The poet is, of course, giving the penguin human characteristics. The bird, having once been polluted,
is now forever wary of ever going back into the sea.
At the same time, however, the penguin gives the appearance of being a solitary bird, forever sad.
Nevertheless, the poet sees triumph through this sadness, as if the bird has of itself gained victory over
humankind.
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"He eats
Fish from his Saviour's hands, and it tastes black."
- Explain the distinctly religious image in these words. (4)
[Need help?]
In Christian terms, the word "Saviour" refers to Jesus Christ. (Notice the use of the uppercase
which indicates this interpretation of the word.)
At the same time, one of the great miracles attributed to Jesus was the feeding of the multitudes with fish.
In this case, the penguins are the multitudes being fed by fish, whereas the humans represent god or the
Saviour performing the miracle.
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- Comment on the expression "it tastes black". (4)
[Need help?]
The colour "black" in traditional western usage is the colour of death.
Although humans have played god by saving the penguins ("Fish from his Saviour's hands"), they
have nevertheless also been responsible for the oil slick in the first place.
It is therefore an irony: the humans caused the deadly slick which nearly killed the penguin but humans
also saved the penguin from destruction. Their fish, therefore, taste black: the black of death caused by
their oil slick.
At the same time, the penguin in his natural habitat lives on live fish, whereas the fish that their
"Saviour" feeds him is dead. It is therefore "black": the black of death.
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