rongest. Olaf’s fantasy was that the ship Jim was on would sink and a white shark would come and eat Jim. The white shark represented was Olaf himself. Olaf hated Jim so much that he wished he was a shark nibbling on Jim’s flesh. Olaf used this fantasy out of hate as a way of getting back at Jim for the shame he caused him. Olaf states in the story, “The ship would sink slowly to the bottom of the cold, black, silent depths of the sea and a shark, a white one, would glide aimlessly about the shut portholes until it found an open one and it would slither inside and nose about until it found that swollen, rotting, stinking carcass of the black beast and it would then begin to nibble at the decomposing mass of tar like flesh, eating the bones clean” (Wright 269).Throughout the story Olaf’s hatred is shown for Jim. It becomes a little stronger after his conversation with Lena, his fantasy of a white shark eating Jim, and when he called Jim a nigger, . Olaf did not have a good reason to hate Jim because Jim did nothing to him. After each situation, Olaf’s hatred seemed to increase. He hated Jim for what he was; a normal black man looking for women and whiskey. Olaf just let unnecessary situations with Jim turn his flame of hatred into a fire....
