Fishing Symbol Analysis

Much like woodworking, fishing symbolizes the certainty and clarity that Monk craves in his personal and professional life. Fly fishing is another of Monk’s favorite hobbies, and he is drawn to it the same reason he is drawn to woodworking: both hobbies offer the allure of certainty he so rarely sees in his relationships or in his work as a writer, where words and ideas are subject to interpretation, and each social interaction or writing project leaves him vulnerable to being misunderstood or misrepresented. The main plot of Erasure is interspersed with brief interludes in which Monk describes some aspect of fishing that entices him, and these sections function to juxtapose the clarity and certainty that Monk so desires with the confusion and ambiguity he is more often faced with in his writing pursuits and in his personal relationships. “Generally fish prefer the smooth curves of nature to the hard edges of humans,” Monk notes in one such interlude, referring to the error some people make in placing humanmade objects in a stream to try to “improve” the fishes’ habitat. In fact, such additions can “cause more harm than good.” In using the figurative language of fishing to contrast the  “smooth curves of nature” with the “hard edges of humans,” Monk comments more generally on the ease and assurance with which different organisms coexist with the unnatural, inefficient, and fallible methods humans have created to interact with and understand one another.