The Dolphins: The Poem

The Dolphins by Carol Ann Duffy presents before us a disturbing picture of

what unregulated power is capable of doing to the lives of others.
Revolving around the themes of exploitation displacement, alienation and
the need for ecological conservation, the poem is presented in the form of
a dramatic monologue of a dolphin. It provides us a perspective of the
oppressed and thoroughly incriminates man for his love of power and
dominance over others.

The speaker of this poem (a dolphin) narrates how its freedom has been
usurped, how its dreams have been shattered and how drastically its world
has changed, thanks to the insatiable greed of man. The lives of these
beautiful sea creatures are completely controlled by man and they are
made to dance to the tunes of the Master. The sense of alienation, their
loss of freedom and the overarching hopelessness makes the poem all the
more poignant, especially when they express their awareness of the
inevitable fate that awaits them.

Summary And Analysis of The Dolphins by Carol Ann Duffy

Stanza 1

World is what you swim in , or dance, it is simple.

We are in our element but we are not free.
Outside this world you cannot breathe for long.
The other has my shape. The other’s movement
forms my thoughts. And also mine.
There is a man and there are hoops.
There is a constant flowing guilt.

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.

It is important to note that even their swimming isn’t a voluntary one: the
dolphins’ natural movements are controlled by man whether it be through
the limits of the pool or the instructions he gives through his whistle.

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 other’s movement

forms my thoughts.
And also mine.

What does the word actually stand for? Does it refer to the ocean, which
commands its physical and emotional yearning (forms my thoughts)? Or is
it the ‘other’ dolphin, its companion, whose movements in the aquarium
shapes its thoughts while mirroring its tricks? Or is it its own reflection on
the aquarium walls which he seems to take for another dolphin? Or is it all
of these?

Also, what does the line “And also mine.” signify? More importantly whose
‘mine‘ is this? Is it the dolphin who is wistfully repeats his own sentence?
Or is it (as seems probable) an utterance of another dolphin who is
seconding the voice of his inmate by echoing his thoughts? If this is the
case, we then begin to see that there is no single speaker involved. The
poem attacks our assumption of such a poem being a monologue spoken
by an individual. In such a case, the poem doesn’t remain a monologue of
a dolphin but rather collective voices of dolphins who are expressing their
collective misery. Again, the use of we gains a heightened meaning as it
doesn’t merely stand for the collective but is voiced by the collective. The
title of the poem The Dolphins then gains a greater relevance in the same
way.

The water that contains and controls the dolphins isn’t devoid of man and
his tools of oppression whether it be in the form of hoops or plastic balls. It
is clear that the aquarium is flooded with waters of guilt. But then again,
whose guilt is it? Is the dolphin’s self guilt for having fallen to the nets of
man? Or does it represent man’s unacknowledged ‘guilt’?

Stanza 2

We have found no truth in these waters,

no explanations tremble on our flesh.
We were blessed and now we are not blessed.
After traveling such space for days we began
to translate . It was the same space. It is
the same space always and above it is man.

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.

Stanza 3

And now we are no longer blessed, for the world

will not deepen to dream in. The other knows
and out of love reflects me for myself.
We see our silver skin flash by like memory
of somewhere else. There is a coloured ball
we have to balance till the man has disappeared.

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.

Stanza 4

The moon has disappeared. We circle well-worn grooves

of water on a single note. Music of loss forever
from the other’s heart which turns my own to stone.
There is a plastic toy. There is no hope. We sink
to the limits of this pool until the whistle blows.
There is a man and our mind knows we will die here.

This 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:

“Music of loss forever from the other’s heart which turns my own to stone”

One remarkable quality the dolphin embodies (and which is clearly lacking
in Man) is empathy. Like most social animals, dolphins have a developed
sense of communication. Coupled with the fact that they use high
frequency sounds (echolocation) to communicate in the form of clicks, it is
quite natural how the music of loss for one dolphin should be instantly
detected by another. Also, the use of internal rhyme (my own to stone) and
the brilliant imagery of death and heaviness conjured by the use of the
word “stone” is fully realized when the dolphin, like the stone, ‘sink‘ in the
next line, thereby, completing the imagery in a wholesome unity.
The ‘plastic toy‘ in this stanza not only highlights the artificial external
addition to the dolphin’s life but also refers to the dolphins themselves for
they have become toys as well. The dolphins sink to the limits of the pool
but their freedom to do so isn’t just restricted by the bottom of the pool, for
they are free to do only “until the whistle blows “.

The last line of the poem betrays a sign of fatalism and hopelessness
which weighs down these magnificent creatures:

There is a man and our mind knows we will die here.

The fact that they are fully aware of their inevitable death, that they are
dancing to the tunes of man despite this knowledge and moreover that
there’s nothing they can do about it imbues this poem with a dark reality
which throws up an uncomfortable truth before us and presents before us
a reality which we have had a hand in making. Thus, by giving a voice to
the voiceless creatures and pointing at the crimes man has committed
against other life forms, the poem also emerges as a fine example of Eco-
critical writing.

As mentioned earlier, the entire monologue uses a plural instead of a

singular, always ‘we’ instead of an ‘I’ which suggests that this is not an
isolated case. Rather, the mode of oppression exercised by man extends
over a large number of creatures. This sense of solidarity of the oppressed
highlighted by the collective noun ‘we’ lends a great magnitude to the voice
of the oppressed. The poem can also be seen as a commentary on the
power relation between man and vast swathes of society that have faced
the full force of oppression based on their gender, race, caste, creed or
nationality. The poem bears a strong feminist undertones by the virtue of
which ‘we’ could be used to designate women who have been
marginalized in the socio-economic power structures deeply embedded in
our society. The repeated use of ‘man‘ as the oppressor to the collective
“us” lends some weight to this reading.

Thus, one could argue that by using the trope of animals Duffy is also
highlighting the forms of oppression within human society where various
sections of the society are denied agency and whose lives have been
reduced to mere existence.