The Commandant and the Stargazer

Out of all of the fish-character parallels, this is the most interesting to me; I'm not entirely sure why. The most literal parallel is obvious: the name stargazer implies someone who is a dreamer and whose dreams are larger than life and are seen as unrealistic or impossible by others. The Commandant dreams of doing something completely unrealistic: turning the island into a nation and effectively recreating Europe.

Gould's physical description of the stargazer is also very similar to that of the Commandant; he mentions the stargazer's "oversized head that dominated the subordinate tapering body", a virtually identical description to that of the commandant (163).

One of the Commandant's characteristics is the juxtaposition of his physical weakness and smallness with the power of his rhetoric. When he first encountered the Commandant, Gould recalls how his speech had a power of persuasion over his audience, and he was able to convince people that his dreams were a reality. He uses that rhetoric not only to convince the convicts and soldiers of his aspirations, but to convince traders to enter into ridiculous deals with him (he sells the great barrier reef, etc.), allowing him to almost accomplish his dreams. This is a bit more of a stretch, but I think the Commandants ability is paralleled by Gould's description of the stargazer catching its prey: "Then, an explosion of sand out of which the stargazer's great body appeared, as if forming out of the very disorder it created...A body flexing and leaping, propelling the stargazer up & sharking down on the hitherto unsuspecting baby flounder, leaving only the Vlach cheering..." Just like the Commandant, the stargazer amazed its audience in the act of killing its prey, despite its slow moving, unassuming typical form. Gould later says that his first painting failed to capture the magnificence of the stargazer. Like the Commandant, its regular physical form is unimpressive. Only in action does it show its true magnificence.