English project

Dolphins
By
Carol Ann Duffy

By:Advik Bijo Senan

Class:Xl-C
Roll No:11628

Acknowlegment
I would like to express my special thanks of gratitude to my
teacher Ms. Sofia Wilson as well as our principa;
Rev.Bro.Thomas who gave me the golden opportunity to do this
wonderful project on the topic Dolphins, which also helped me
in doing a lot of Research and i came to know about so many
new things I am really thankful to them.

Secondly i would also like to thank my parents and friends who

helped me a lot in finalizing this project within the limited time
frame.

The Dolphins by Carol Ann Duffy is dramatic

monologue voiced by a dolphin which revolve around
exploitation displacement, alienation and the need
for ecological conservation. The poem presents us a
disturbing picture of what unregulated power is capable of
doing to the lives of others. It provides us a perspective of
the oppressed and thoroughly incriminates man for his
love of power and dominance over others.
The poem opens on a disturbing note where the dolphins
narrate what their world has been reduced into. The poem
largely employs the use of first person point of view and
carries a dejected and a wry tone. The act of swimming
and dancing both refer to a form of movement. However,
there’s a world of difference between the two insofar as
the situation of the dolphin is concerned.  Swimming
connotes a sense of freedom and volition whereby the
dolphins could choose to navigate the expansive ocean.
Dancing, on the other hand underscores a sense of
confinement where a dolphin is forced to ‘dance’ in front
of the spectators. Its identity as a sea-roving creature has
been has been overlooked and its life has become a public
spectacle. Dolphins are made for swimming and an
unwilling, dancing dolphin is rarely a happy one. By
forcing the dolphin to perform some people-pleasing
tricks, man makes it go against its nature and denies the
identity it actually has, thereby reducing it to a plaything.
The phrase ‘it is simple‘ in the first line of the poem
betrays a hopeless resignation the dolphin has come to
embrace. The dolphins are made to play any role that
pleases the master, whether it is dancing, swimming or
balancing balls. Their identity is made to occupy
various moulds, quite like water, the “element” they live
in which takes the shape of any container it is stored in.
The first stanza makes it clear that the dolphins have no
option. Though it is placed in water (we are in our
element), it is not free, for the moment it tries to escape,
and death will become inevitable as it will not be able to
“breathe for long”. The pool is a stagnant space where
the native becomes a captive and motion becomes
stasis. The freedom the dolphins long for lies beyond the
aquarium but any attempt to get out of it will result in
immediate death. The denial of their freedom by the
shrinking of the “world” they inhabit merely allows them
to exist without letting them actually live. In other
words, the dolphin makes it clear that one can go on
existing without actually living and that freedom is a
prerequisite to a full-blown life. This is exactly what has
been denied. The dolphins are caught between the devil
and the deep sea. Only in this case, the Devil is Man
himself and the deep sea is but a shallow aquarium.
One of the distinctive features of this poem is its
ambiguity. The poem throws up interesting questions
precisely at points where one is most confident about its
meanings. A case in point is the use of the word ‘other‘
in the first stanza:
The waters where the dolphins are kept isn’t their friend
and certainly not a medium of justice where Truth may be
sought: We have found no truth in these waters. Rather, it
is complicit in the ruthless exploitation of the dolphins
by functioning as a tool of oppression – one with which
the dolphins may be kept alive just so that they may be
exploited. It is with the aid of water that the existence of
dolphins becomes a means to someone else’s ends. The
dolphins were blessed when they freely traversed the vast
expanse of the ocean. Unfortunately, they are not blessed
anymore. Their erstwhile blessed life has become a cursed
existence and Man is the cause of this reversal.
The dolphins took days to register the grave, undeserved
injury inflicted on them. However, after days of the
traumatic experience  they have begun to realize
(translate) that there’s not much difference between the
large ocean or a small pool . ‘It is the same space ‘ as
both spaces are not free from the domination of man. The
dolphins took days to register the grave, undeserved
injury inflicted on them. However, after days of the
traumatic experience  they have begun to realize
(translate) that there’s not much difference between the
large ocean or a small pool . ‘It is the same space ‘ as
both spaces are not free from the domination of man.

The third stanza takes the reader to poignant heights

through the loss of depth which is the ocean. A sad reality
of the dolphins is that their “world will not deepen to
dream in “: they have nothing beyond their present
condition. Their self-realization and self-fulfillment stops
with the bottom of the pool. Their life has become a
forgotten memory and their identity a reflection on the
aquarium glass where they see the reflection “flash by like
memory of somewhere else”.
The ‘coloured ball ‘which they have to balance and
the plastic toy” referred in the third stanza lends a form
of artificiality their life has been reduced to.

The Last stanza is replete with a sense of confinement

and claustrophobia. We realize that the dolphins’ loss
includes not only the expansive ocean but also a limitless
sky. The moon has disappeared for them and the colored
ball they balance functions as a sickly substitute to the
splendid sphere of the night sky.  They circle “well worn
grooves of water on a single note “. Notice the sense of
monotony conveyed by the use of “a single note” that not
only refers to the monotony of movement but also a
monotony of sound which is extended in the next line:

Bibliography
 Economics
project
On

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act

BY:
Advik bijo senan
XI-C
11628