The opening line of Elizabeth Bishop's "The Fish" is a startling one, "I caught a tremendous fish" as the poet beams with pride at its size and her accomplishment. She clearly has the intent of keeping her catch alive as she continues, "and held him beside the boat/Half out of water, with my hook/fast in a corner of his mouth." She conveys the main parts of the scenery very well -- boat, fish, water, and hook.
Her description of the setting is visual. Her diction relates a sense of ease as she continues: "He didn't fight./He hadn't fought at all." She depicts the fish as an ugly one, choosing words that convey a sense of weighty unattractiveness. "He hung a grunting weight,/Battered and venerable/And homely. Here and there/His brown skin hung in strips/Like ancient wallpaper," She shows a sense of respect for the aged and battered fish. She continues: "And its pattern of darker brown/was like wallpaper:/Shapes like full-blown roses/Stained and lost through age." Her lines are filled with imagery as she describes the ancient fish.
Bishop continues her poem: "He was speckled with barnacles,/Fine rosettes of lime/And infested with tiny white sea-lice,/And underneath two or three rags/Of green weed hung down." Her description of the her trophy fish is not so glamorous as she meticulously uses imagery of sickness and putrescence. As she writes, her sense of rhythm quickens: "While his gills were breathing in/The terrible oxygen/--The frightening gills,/Fresh and crisp with blood,/That can cut so badly--/I thought of the coarse white flesh/Packed in like feathers,/The big bones and the little bones/The dramatic reds and blacks/of his shiny entrails,/And the pink swim-bladder/Like a big peony." Her diction paints a picture of the anatomical features of the fish. She alludes to oxygen as being "terrible" -- and gills as being "frightening". She clearly views the fish as being alien-like -- hideous even -- but uses a simile to liken the swim-bladder to a beautiful flower .
In the next few lines, she anthropomorphizes the object, the fish. "I looked into his eyes/Which were far larger than mine/But shallower, and yellowed/The irises backed and packed with tarnished tinfoil/Seen through the lenses/Of old scratched isinglass./They shifted a little, but not/To return my stare/--It was more like the tipping/Of an object toward the light" Here, she describes the fish's eyes as she examines them, likening the irises to tinfoil. However, she perceives less like a conscious creature and more like a machine, as her description goes on: "I admired his sullen face,/The mechanism of his jaw/And then I saw/From his lower lip/--If you could call it a lip--/Grim, wet, and weaponlike,/Hung five old pieces of fish-line/Or four and a wire leader still attached/With all their five big hooks/Grown firmly in his mouth./A green line, frayed at the end/Where he broke it, two heavier lines, and a fine black thread/Still crimped from the strain and snap/When it broke and he got away." Bishop portrays the fish as a battle-scarred survivor who has escaped death. She continues: "Like medals with their ribbons/Frayed and wavering,/A five-haired beard of wisdom/Trailing from his aching jaw." The fish is not only a literal survivor but Bishop's metaphor is of the fish as a decorated soldier. Bishop continues: "I stared and stared/And victory filled up/The little rented boat,/From the pool of bilge/Where oil had spread a rainbow/Around the rusted engine/To the bailer rusted orange,/The sun-cracked thwarts,/The oarlocks on their strings,/The gunnels until everything/Was Rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!/And I let the fish go."
Works Cited
Bishop, E. "The Fish." Web. 02 July 2014.
