¶ … Senior Class at South High
In his work On Reading Poems to a Senior Class at South High D.C. Berry characterizes a class of high school students as a school of fish. This characterization is an obvious pun, but may also be viewed as a negative portrayal of a system of education that packs students into classrooms like fish in an aquarium and diminishes the value of independent thought for the convenience of the conformity that facilitates the smooth functioning of the institution.
The poem begins with the word "Before" (line 1) sitting alone atop the first stanza signaling a transformation to come. The first stanza conveys the initial impression that the students in the classroom are like frozen fish in a package, orderly and inanimate. The narrator begins reading poetry to the class and his words change the environment, "Slowly...
This is confirmed by lines 7-9 in which the narrator states that he did not notice this (the water) until it reached his ears.
It is significant to note that the first to stanzas are roughly the same length (four lines each), however stanza three, after the words, or ideas, begin to fill the room is one long unpunctuated sentence of eight lines. The content of the stanza reveals that though the narrator "tried to drown them with my words" (lines 13-14) the ideas the words conveyed stimulated the students who "opened up like gills for them and let me in" (lines15-17). The construction of the stanza indicates the excitement of the moment.
The fourth stanza describes the pleasure of the intellectual experience shared by the narrator and the class as they "swam around…
