Ghost of a Chance Explication

                Ghost of a Chance by Adrienne Rich uses figurative language and imagery to expose a man trying to separate himself from the world. The entire poem is relatively straight forward in terms of organization. The poet wrote her poem in chronological order and then ending in a simile of comparing the man thinking independently to a fish flopping around on the beach until the waves pull it back in. She also uses careful word choice by having the narrator address the reader in the opening line, “You see a man trying to think.” By choosing the word “you” the poet is addressing the reader and mentally placing them in the poem’s setting. In the reader’s mind they picture a man sitting by himself and not being able to think because of the constant commotion from people and surroundings from the world around him. At one point she mentions that, “the old consolations will get him at last”. The “old consolations” could be a myriad of things. The poet then starts comparing the consolations to a fish gasping for air in a rather morbid simile, “like a fish half-dead from flopping/ across the shingle, almost breathing, the raw agonizing air/ till a wave pulls it back blind into the triumphant sea”.  Consolations are usually things related to comfort, especially after an emotional loss. I found it odd that the poet would use a consolation as a metonymy to a fish desperately fighting for air. However, the fish struggling to survive could mimic the suffocating atmosphere of society and its constant intrusion on people’s lives and their desires to be different from the status quo. The sea is described by a very selective adjective, “triumphant” signifying the victory and/or chance of being individual. The title then, Ghost of a Chance, proves to be very poignant because though the poem never mentions it, it implies that the man probably never succeeded and eventually succumbed back into societal pressures. The man lost his chance and continues to be the fish along the shore.