Symbiosis
The presiding theme of “The Maldive Shark” is the necessity for symbiosis in the universe. The shark relies upon the pilot fish for catching prey and the pilot fish relies upon the shark for protection. This is a universal reality among all creatures and can even be applied directly to humans in the case of islands who capture the shark for food. Less literally, of course, is the figurative symbolism of the symbiotic relationship here which can be applied to all manner of interdependency.
Malevolent Design
An alternative reading of the symbiosis at play in the deep here is one tied to a pervasive theme at work in the literature of Melville. At odds with the Transcendentalist view of nature as benign and beautiful is Melville’s postulation in Moby-Dick and “The Maldive Shark” that a much darker side exists around us. The interdependent relationship between the shark and the pilot-fish ultimately results in the violent feasting upon the “horrible meat” which becomes food for the shark. In this view, some critics has forwarded the notion that the underlying theme of the poem is really about how nature often is designed for the purpose of malevolence lacking any inherently obvious beauty.
Complicity
In keeping with Melville’s rather pessimistic view of nature is the reading of the poem as a critique of his pessimistic view of mankind. A common reading of the theme of “The Maldive Shark” is one that situates the pilot fish as complicit in the deaths of the fish that ultimately become the shark’s “horrible meat.” The pilot fish do not intend to sacrifice its own predators to the shark so that they transform into prey, but that is the inevitable outcome. If that outcome becomes an inevitability of the symbiotic relationship between the shark and the pilot fish, then the question is fairly raised as to whether the pilot fish bears as much responsibility for the death of the shark’s prey as the shark itself.
