Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market

Death permeates the poem from open to close. But more than just death, the poem deals with the contrast between life and death. This is evident in the first stanza when a lengthy and lively description of the fish’s life contrasts with the abruptness of its body “lying in front of me / dead” (Lines 9-10). The beginning of the final stanza echoes this movement to death in an inverted order: “Dead / in front of me” (Lines 52-53). In each instance, Neruda isolates the word “dead” by placing it alone in a line; this exaggerate death’s power while the speaker confronts it. Even if the tuna occupies many lines of the poem with its liveliness and movement, death comes crashing down and destroys all of it with one simple, blunt word.

Neruda closes the poem with the image of death, calling the fish’s current location “the waters of death” (Line 85). The end of the poem almost offers a sense of hope as the tuna seems to embody a new state of existence in death. In this existence, the speaker once again defines the tuna by its fluid movement through the water, almost as if it has regained a piece of itself by exiting the land of men it occupied earlier in the poem.