Literary Analysis: Perfect Catch

Johanna Rose C. Abellanosa and Adrian Paul Rosos

Perfect Catch

By Ken Rave Agtoto The years unravelled and I lost my glow I came to feel like some loathsome trash The love of someone else you came to know As self-esteem then crumbled with a crash She sees the fake from fact her pride now past She takes a breath and sees the big blue sky Her past not perfect but she’s free at last She needs no answer to the question, “why” The sun would not go down till we had met No more a tear imprisoned by her past And dreams of me would leave you in a sweat A simple smile her dice she has now cast I bring my puzzle looking for a match At last she’ll be my true love’s perfect catch

Critical Analysis The sonnet, Perfect Catch, by Ken Rave Agtoto is inspirational because the poet is somehow telling us that we must treasure what is important to us. We should prioritise what is important to us and must keep it or it will be gone and we would regret what we did. We must value the things or the people we deemed important to us and let us appreciate them. The poet is telling the readers that if we love someone we should treasure them.

Perfect Catch is a Shakespearean sonnet. Agtoto heeds the custom of the sonnet in Perfect Catch, as it consists of 14 lines of total, and each line containing 10 syllables and follows the Iambic pentameter pattern. It follows the rhyme scheme of A-B-A-B-C-D-C-D-E-F-E-F-G-G. The sonnet is about regretting the things the speaker had done in the past. The speaker was grieving his loss. He realizes that it was too late now to change back what happened before because now he finally realizes what he had lost. In the first quatrain, it showed how the speaker lost all his confidence and it crushed him when he realized that his love finally found someone else.

The exposition started with the speaker feeling lost and he felt like he was trash based on the things he did to his past love. Metaphors are prominent in this sonnet. We can find some in some lines like the line “A simple smile her dice she has now cast.” It compares her smile to a dice who changes like a dice who has many faces. The twist can be found in the couplet. In the first three stanzas, the speaker was grieving and regretting but when the couplet came in it showed that the speaker finally accepted what he had lost.

So the sonnet started with a sad note. The speaker talks about his past as he reminisces about the things he had done to his ex-lover. He was having flashbacks and then the sonnet comes into the present where the ex-lover found another man and was finally happy with someone else.

“The years unravelled and I lost my glow I came to feel much like some loathsome trash” This line states that as the years untangled he somehow lost his motivation to strive forward.

He was in a depressing mode and lost the glow he had when he was young. He was not the same person anymore. He despaired about the things he had done to his past lover and felt like a scum.

“The love of someone else you came to know As self-esteem then crumbled with a crash.”

In this line, the speaker talks about his past love, finding another love and finally being happy.

This causes him to have his self-esteem crumbling. It was like a slap in the face as he realized that when they were in a relationship, it was not smooth sailing and when he saw his past lover’s happiness it all just seemed to make his self-esteem go down.

“She takes a breath and sees the big blue sky Her past not perfect but she’s free at last” This line tells us that the speaker’s past love took a deep breath as if inhaling fresh air and inhaling her new found freedom. The second life is explanatory as it states. Her experience in her past may not be the best but now she’s free from the shackles that held her back.

“She needs no answer to the question, “why”

The girl doesn’t need to wonder anymore why their relationship failed, why it didn’t last, and why it went wrong because she has already moved on and those questions just became a blur as she had finally moved on from her past.

“The sun would not go down till we had met” This line tells us that before they had met their days were filled with happiness and joy and everything was fine. Their days were normal and they lived their lives just as usual but by the time they had met, it seemed like it was just full of darkened days. It was all cries, yells, and curses.

“No more a tear imprisoned by her past” The girl finally moves on from her past. She can finally smile and be happy and feel the bliss of life. No more tears to shed, no more fights to fight, and no more worries about what will happen to tomorrow if this cycle will continue again. Tears didn't need to shed anymore as she had moved on forward.

“And dreams of me would leave you in a sweat” This line states that when the girl sleeps, she would have nightmares of her past. She would remember her days that were filled with grief and sadness. It seemed like the girl was traumatised by her past relationship and became a scar to her mind and heart.

“A simple smile her dice she has now cast” In this line it tells us that finally the girl has cast away her fake smiles and finally she can smile genuinely. Her smile was compared to a dice who has many faces and it tells us that her smile shows different meanings depending on her mood or the people she meets.

“I bring my puzzle looking for a match At last she’ll be my true love’s perfect catch” It states here that the speaker felt like something is missing and is looking for someone to fill that missing piece. If I were to guess, this is probably the reason why the speaker and his past love decided to break their relationship because he was looking for another person to fill the gap.

He probably feels safe in their relationship and seemed used to his past lover that he probably grew tired and when the time comes that he was looking for someone to spice things up. It took a blow to their relationship. The speaker greatly regretted what he had done because now he realizes that his past love was his perfect catch. He now sees the value of his past lover.

Humans are foolish. We do things that are harmful not just to us but the people that surround us. I feel, as human beings, we constantly crave for positive attention. And appreciating someone is the best way to go about doing it. The problem starts when we don’t even notice how we slipped into the habit of taking each other for granted and stopped caring for, and appreciating each other. This leads to other problems - arguments, frustration, resentment and suddenly we begin to wonder if this relationship is meant to work out.

When people are in the comfort-zone of their relationship, they tend to take their partners as someone you can depend on and rely on. This probably makes the relationship scratched and ripped as their respective partners are being taken for granted and they don’t feel appreciated. I believe that when we are in a relationship it is all about appreciating the things they do to us. The effort they put in as they try to please you and make you happy. A relationship is not about making your partner feel like he/she is not enough, instead they should feel like they are loved.

I think this sonnet is applicable to this generation as I had witnessed that many of my peers are into a relationship where some are made into a bank or a servant or even a trophy where the partner is being bragged. I hope that this generation can learn from this sonnet to save their relationship and nowadays it’s not easy to get back the things we want to go back. We cannot change the time so if we are in a relationship we must love them wholeheartedly and we mustn’t let them feel like they are not enough.

References Cogtas, J. (2017, December 3). How to Write a Critical Analysis of a Sonnet[Blog post].

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