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Poem Analysis: The Fish By Elizabeth Bishop

661 Words3 Pages

The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop Poetry is the art of minimal storytelling, often containing hidden or abstract ideas as the theme. Theme in other types of literature tends to be more distinct and clear cut, a theme tells the lesson or point of a book, story, or movie. In poetry, however, it can be necessary to read three or four times over to merely understand the “point” of the poem. While poems are much shorter than other literary forms, it can require the most thought and probe your mind for alternative perceptions. Although this is a free verse poem, it maintains a solid sense of consistency. “The Fish” has no meter, and completely avoids rhyme scheme, even slant rhymes. Perhaps the free form is present to backup and represent the fisher …show more content…

This large fish is more than a lethargic, negligent fish; he is a veteran. He has been ensnared, yet managed to escape every time. The respect the narrator of the poem gives to the fish is a result of his understood past. The fish has a weighted reputation, hooks loftily dangling from his lips with the lines still attached. The hooks are the equivalent to medals. Often veterans are ignored, left to rot and decay away at the bottom of their own muddy waters. The fish, in this theory is a war …show more content…

Another instance to support the theory that the fish is symbolic for veterans is when the fisher says the hooks in the fish mouth is: "Like medals with their ribbons / frayed and wavering" (Bishop 61-62). The fish is at a formal event, he is in battle with a fisherman, an early arrival to his own funeral. He seemed to have given up, quoted as: “He didn’t fight. / He hadn’t fought at all” (Bishop 5-6). As the narrator goes on to describe the fish, you learn he is infested with sea lice, his skin is decaying, and his eyes could no longer see as intended. His body showed that he was not only an old fish, but one that used to fiercely fight for his life. He has become tired now, and is ready to approach death, not even attempting to escape the clutches of death hooked on his

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