Isolation In Karisma Price's Castnet Sea

“From Blue to Red”

1 in 10,000 crawfish are blue. It can happen as a result of a mutation in the gene responsible for pigment formation. They stand out from the rest of the crawfish due to their obvious differences. Isolation can relate to a blue crawfish as it makes people feel lonely and as if no one can relate to them leading to a loss of hope and joy. The best treatment, however, comes not from medications, but happiness which can be found in times as simple as conversations with family. Karisma Price in her “Castnet Seafood” uses the blue crawfish as a metaphor for a lack of joy by exemplifying how a blue crawfish is someone who is overtaken by sadness and who isolates themselves rather than surrounding themselves with family where

Price uses this as a subtle relation to not only her personal experiences, but also life as a whole. As she was dealing with chronic back pain, she said that she found herself “self-isolating and depressed.” This further worsened her condition as it led her to dwell on her struggles rather than looking for new opportunities to improve. Price uses the blue crawfish as a metaphor for herself as she began to feel blue and lonely with her separation from society. When Price describes the blue crawfish as it “watches us from the tank of the market, spared from a boiled, seasoned death,” she is explaining how when someone, or herself, isolates themself they watch others live life normally (Price 3-4). The “boiled, seasoned death” represents not a sad moment, but actually a happy one as the crawfish that get boiled obtaining their end goal which is to end up with their family on a plate (Price 4). Though getting boiled may seem bad from a human’s standpoint, crawfish live their life with their end goal of ending up boiled and served. The role of crawfish in this world is to serve as a food, and their achievement in their life is to end up as food, boiled all together with their crawfish family rather than being stuck, lonely, and dead at the bottom of the ocean. The blue crawfish is so different that it is preserved or in this case left in the “tank of the market” where they

She found this cure in family as she tells of when she went to visit home. “I love my family, unlike my back,” Price stated as she recalled her experience with her family (Price 19). This was a turning point in her life as this first experience with her family after a while changed Price’s view of herself. She accepted the fact that she had back problems, but learned to preserve and find happiness through the ones who loved her most. While she, her cousin and her uncle sit down to eat some crawfish they discuss the idea of a blue crawfish and wonder about its life. They think about whether it enjoys standing out or if it “burrows deeper into the mud,” due to all the attention it receives (Price 35). Price uses this to reflect upon herself and how she decides to burrow herself in the mud of isolation when instead she could have embraced her problems and tried to move on. Her time with her family cheered her up and made her feel as though she was included in the pot of crawfish. The idea of being surrounded by those who cared for her not only made Price feel better but also inspired her. Price said that when her uncle mentioned “Joy is the opposite of running into a dagger,” she instantly knew she wanted to include that in a poem (Price 5-6). The idea behind that is not crystal clear and can be interpreted many different