Behaviour of Fish in an Egyptian Tea Garden Commentary

“Behaviour of Fish in an

Egyptian Tea Garden” by Keith

Douglas is about a beautiful

woman and her power to

seduce, manipulate men of any

age. The author uses

metaphors and similes by

comparing the woman “as a

white stone” and men as fishes

“A cotton magnate/…A

crustacean” to show how men’s

behavior are like of any other

animal species or as

predictable as fish. The author

keeps the imagery of a large

aquatic marine environment to

consistently illustrate the

relationship between that of an

aquatic marine life to the

behavior of men, “fish”,

towards a single, attractive

woman. This constant,

predictable “behavior” pattern

could be exploited to

manipulate and control if

someone, the woman, wishes

to.

“Behaviour of Fish in an

Egyptian Tea Garden” consists

of seven stanzas each with four

lines in length. A narrative

poem, the poem is a

documentary containing with

two speakers, one is the

narrator the other is a

character introduced later in

the poem. Douglas doesn’t

have a structural rhyme

scheme throughout his poem.

They would change with each

stanza. Case in point, stanza

one has an ABAB rhyming

structure, stanza two has an

ABBA, and stanza three has an

ABBC. In addition, the other

stanzas that follow have either

no rhyming scheme, stanza 5,

or continue the inconsistent

rhyming pattern. However,

there is some noticeable

consistency in the poem. All

the lines in each of the stanzas

have a moderate amount of

words, each with 9-10 syllables.

The poem could be arranged

into four segments. The first

segment introduces the “slyly”

woman and her deliberate

position as “she draws down

the fish”. The second segment

introduces the second speaker

of the poem which the most

“important fish”. The third

introduces the men who gaze

on the woman’s beauty. The

fourth switches back to the