The Use of First Person in the Story Yellow Fish

The Use of First Person in the Story Yellow Fish

The Use of First Person in the Story Yellow Fish’

The Use of First Person in the Story Yellow Fish

‘Yellow fish’ is a short story by Ambai, an Indian Tamil feminist writer. The story is narrated in the first person. But the storyteller introduced the first person ‘I’ not at the beginning of the story but in the middle with the use of which the theme of the story takes a turn. Before introducing the first person ‘I’ the author narrates the story objectively. She gives a vivid and realistic description of the seashore along with fishermen returning from fishing hunts. It was a Summer evening. The sand of the shore felt hot. Away to the left of the shrunken sea and spent waves, the sand spread like a desert. One among the fishing boats had arrived on the shore. Its colour was white and floated like a swan, swaying from side to side. The fisherwomen seemed ready to welcome the boats.

The objective narration of the sea-shore before introducing the first person ‘I’ creates a realistic effect on the theme of the story. In the second portion, we met with a woman character named Anu. She is on the seashore along with her husband. She has lost her girl-child named Jalaja and her ashes are in an urn to be washed away in the sea. The description of the sea that the author has given before takes a symbolic and metaphorical meaning in the later portion of the story. The sea along with its waves and stretch of water symbolizes liberation which a woman craves for in a male-dominated society. 0 0 0

The Use of First Person in the Story Yellow Fish