Symbolism In Fish Spine By Santiago Nazarian

“Fish Spine” by Santiago Nazarian is the story in the life of Hau and him getting over his insecurity’s to give a gift to his love interest. The story starts out with Hau washing his hands trying not to get the faucet or anything around him dirty with the smell of fish. Hau believes he smells of fish due to working with his parents cleaning the fish spines. Something that he doesn’t want anybody to smell when they meet him especially a girl that he likes. A girl who Hau spends a great amount of time with always wanting to be more but not having the courage due to his fear that he smells of fish. Then one day Hau and the girl are going to be at a party where Hau finally gets the courage to make an origami fish for her as a gift. Which the girl

Joseph Lostracco in his book Analyzing short stories defines symbolism as “something that represents or suggest something else” which is what Nazarian does with the fish in “Fish Spine” (Lostracco 40). By using the fish as a symbol as shown when it says, “knife on spine, fish on eyes…” and “wrapping the fish Packing the scraps…” (Nazarian 961). Nazarian is able to show how Hau sees and feels about himself. He has very little confidence in himself and feels that the smell from his work will get in the way of him being something more with the girl. It’s not until the end when Hau is finally able to overcome his insecurity that he makes a “stainless... oragami paper fish” for the girl which Nazarian uses to represent the purity and type of person he has become (Nazarian 962). Nazarian even goes further by adding that the origami fish does smell to show that Hau flaws don’t matter and that he can still achieve something with the girl. By using symbolism in this way, Nazarian is able to show in depth the struggle and process Hau must goes through in order to overcome his fear and insecurity and show that his stench wasn’t a big deal as he thought it would be with the