Short summary,
In this fictional universe, having an imagination is banned by the government and its considered as illegal. However, one day, a boy saves a fish and in his head, he imagines it as a mermaid. This surprises everyone and makes the government angry, even tho he wasn't causing harm to anyone, and was just happy by himself and his own imagination. The government arrests him and tortures him to make him lose his imagination, which is the mermaid. He fights back for a long time but at the end, he can't remember the mermaid anymore. Instead, his mind is filled with the information that he might not even need, which the government forced him to learn.
My thoughts,
I don't know what everyone else thinks of the story, or what was the true meaning of it but, in my point of view, this is a story of society trying to get rid of creativity. It kind of reminds me of my home country, Iran.
The main character find joy, music, and is finally happy being himself but the society doesn't like that, no one is used to it, they find it weird and not acceptable, most of them might even think of him as an mentally ill person.
Not even his parents can understand him so they all turn on him.
He is put through therapy, and is forced to learn things that are supposed to help him be accepted by the society.
And unfortunately, because he doesn't have the support of the others, and people around him might not agree with him because of their own reasons ( could be religious, could be being scared of the government, could be personal reasons ) he loses the fight and gives up at the end, becoming like everyone else and losing his diversity.
