This week I decided to focus more on The Fejee Mermaid Hoax (Penguin Book of Mermaids) and it made almost a guide to how I would want to structure my discovery assignment to go. The way in which this one story has let so many other mermaid discoveries come to light was impactful but also made me wonder if there are so many people claiming what they have seen, why would it still be a debate? Throughout the pages we were supposed to read it was giving clear examples from different years and locations in which mermaid sightings took place and somewhat of a description of how exactly it happened. The last paragraph on page 243 in which there is a description of a Asiastic mermaid in London 1775 was able to describe them but in the way they didn’t want the mermaid to look human and even though she had clear human characteristics I felt as if they were almost trying to portray her as ugly so society can still feel fearful and possibly not confide in what was being said? They would describe her characteristics she held which all sounded human but made sure to incorporate her fishlike features just like “It’s ears are like those of the eel, but placed like those of human species,..” (page 243) which was strange because if they were originally being described as creatures who are human from the waist up and fish from the bottom down, how is it that these features are able to mix together if there has been a divide in their physical traits?

One of the important questions that resonated with me was the way in which there were connections between different species of animals which led to the question of, “…why may we not supposed that there is also a connecting link between fish and the human species?” (page 241). This was the point that made me even question and realize the similarities between so many animals and why is it that I couldn’t make those connections between humans and mermaids? My entire life the only mermaid figure I knew and loved was Ariel from The Little Mermaid but the Disney version which I don’t think truly represents the entire mermaid culture from what I have learned from this course. Knowing the picture of Ariel I have always had in my head and us as humans I was never able to piece how we are both similar in many ways because I felt an important point I learned as a kid through this movie was almost to fear the ocean since mermaids or other creatures that appeared from this movie live there and can cause problems, which almost delayed my realization that humans and mermaids are more connected to each other than society cares to acknowledge. This one section has sparked my interest to truly find or hopefully find any sort of bigger connections that human and mermaids but also the ocean have in common with each other, or even how it forms a cycle between each other.