The Fisherman and His Soul is a short story written by Oscar Wilde and published in his book, A House of Pomegranates, in 1888. In Lowell's Communicative Drawing II class, we recently were assigned to come up with a narrative illustration, one which could play the roll of either a chapter page or a cover illustration, so, I chose this story to illustrate. In case you haven't read this story or don't remember it incredibly well, below I've typed up a synopsis of the introduction leading up until the scene I've drawn out.

As the story goes, a young fisherman finds difficulty catching fish. One day, he has a strike of luck and reels in a beautiful mermaid, "body white as ivory and tail of silver and pearl." In exchange for setting her free, the fisherman asks for her to sing whenever he asks so that she may attract fish from the sea inward so he may catch them and sell them at the market. They continue this daily until one evening the fisherman declares his love for her, but she cannot love anyone with a soul.

 

So... The Fisherman goes on a quest to rid himself of his soul. First, he goes to a Priest, and after getting called either mad or delusional from 'eating a poisonous herb,' is sent away, the soul is sacred, priceless. Second, he tries his luck at the black market. No one has any use of a soul, they would gladly take his soul-less body as a slave, but the soul is useless to them. Stuck with a soul between him and his love, the mermaid, and with no help from the priests or the merchants, he goes to a red-haired witch.

 

He tells her of his dilemma, and she agrees to tell him how to split from his soul, but first, and as payment, he must dance with her under the full moon light of the equinox, in the grass on top of a specific mountain.

 

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And so it goes, if you would like to continue along with the story, you can start from the begining or scroll down to around page 8 on the link right here. I promise I haven't ruined the entire story, there's an entire 28 more pages.