Themes And Symbolism In Fish Spine By Santiago Nazarian

Reality hits home Santiago Nazarian is a Brazilian born writer who wrote the short story “Fish Spine” (960, Charters). “Fish Spine” starts off as a simple story about a boy named Hua, who sells fish at his parents’ local market. Hua is a very hard worker and helps his parents tremendously at the stall; he cleans, wraps, freezes, and sells fish on a day-to-day basis. Although he helps out in the family business, Hua hopes to do something more with his life in the near future as he has a crush on a wealthy local girl who passes by his parents’ stall daily. The two have a very formal friendship and this partly has to do with the reason of Hua being embarrassed of working at the stall and his fish odor on his hands. Although he spends a lot of time cleaning his hands, Hua still worries that the girl will be able to smell the remnant of the fish odor. With his constant worrying Hua finally builds up the courage one night to go up to his love interest and give her an origami piece he made, the girl is pleased however the origami smells of fish, which is something Hua …show more content…
Symbolism as described by Lostracco is when “something is used to represent or suggests something else” (40, Lostracco). In the short story the fish spine is a symbol to Hua’s life. Hua mentions throughout the story his back pain that he has due to his job and this relates back to the fish spine because they are both something internal. Nazarian writes, “He bent over the sink and felt his back ache. He bent over the sink and felt his spine” (961, Nazarian). No matter how hard Hua tries to cover up the facts of where he works, his back pain is a reminder of his job at the stall and this is an internal conflict he has within himself; character vs. self. Hua is embarrassed of his job and does everything in his power to hide who he truly is however just how a fish spine is internal so are his issues that he has with