The weeks before, I was presented with 3 short stories from the book Inside Story: “The Persian Carpet” by Hanan Shaykh, “Sea Devil” by Arthur Gordon, and “Wild Horse” by Brian Fawcett. But, my favorite story is “Sea Devil” by Arthur Gordon.
The Protagonist of the story is a well-off man, in his late twenty. He is a man of nature, he loves testing his strength and fishing. As a wealthy and successful man, he does not fish for food, but for enjoyment. He loves the loneliness of the night, and the silent of the sky full of stars.
The story takes place in Florida, in the latter of the 20th century. The main characters gets out of his house, get on to his skiff and goes fishing with the net. He ties the rope connected to the net onto his wrist. He think he got some mullets, but nature has some trick at it’s sleeve. He instead catches a giant Mantra Ray. It pulls him off the skiff. He then has to fight a desperate battle for his life.
The reasons I love this story are… it’s realistic way of detailing, the beautiful imagery words in the story. The ironic metaphor in this story is that, we, the specie which has stepped it’s feet on the moon surface, should learn to cooperate, instead of trying to control the mother nature. I realized this as a modern passenger jet flew over the protagonist head, as he just barely get out of the God of Death’s scythe.
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