Introduction of the Poem:
“Breaded Fish” is based on the poet's actual experience as a boy when his mother had thrust a piece of breaded (roasted) fish into his mouth. Though eager to eat it, he could not do so because he suddenly recollected the sight of a half - naked dead woman lying on the beach. The poem has been praised for its terseness of diction and the consummate skill with which Ramanujan has introduced rhythm and assonance in it, apart from its sharply etched, crystallized images and his disciplined handling of the language. In just twelve lines he has compressed the image of a half - naked dead woman, the sandy sea beach and a snake on a heath besides the image of the woman trying to force the young lad to eat the breaded fish which he is resisting.
Critical Summary:
The young boy's desire to eat breaded fish was once crushed and frustrated. His mother prepared roasted fish for him. She even tried to “thrust” it into his mouth with the rod on which it had been roasted. But he pushed the breaded fish back because of his sudden recollection of the dead body of a half - naked, dead woman lying on the beach. The dead body was partially covered in “a yard of cloth”. It occurred to him that the woman's dead body had been breaded by “the grained indifference of sand”. The sight of the dead body made him imagine that the half - naked woman was being eaten by fish. This greatly upset and agitated him. He found it impossible to eat the breaded fish , or even to continue sitting there. That memory had risen in his mind like a coiled snake raising its hood on a heath.
About this “curious” poem, Paul Varghese says: “In Breaded Fish the poet speaks not only of his inability to eat breaded fish on ‘a blunt headed smelt’ but also of the memory it evoked in him: ‘a hood / of memory like a coil on a heath / opened in my eyes’. He was reminded of a ‘dark half - naked length of woman, dead on the beach in a yard of cloth, dry, rolled by the ebb, breaded by the great indifference of sand’. Unable to picture the sight, he ran towards the shore with his heart beating in his mouth. The poem is apparently autobiographical and mingles memory with desire - desire to eat the fish thwarted by the snake of deeply rooted memory, read to sting him.”
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