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The Fish Bishop Imagery

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Imagery in a poem can be a word or sequence of words that can relate to something can be seen, heard, touched, smelt, or tasted. In Elizabeth Bishop’s poem, The Fish Bishop uses imagery to get her ideas across. Bishop goes into detail to describe the appearance of this hideous fish that this person has caught to show how human nature has, in some way, corrupted nature. Bishop also uses imagery to show how the fisherman feels about the fish. Bishop uses imagery throughout the poem to help understand these concepts by painting a picture of it and letting the reader decipher the meanings of it on their own. As Bishop is describing the fish, the reader gets a very vivid image of how this fish looks. This fish is being described as hideous, using descriptions such as battered, brown skin hanging is strips, speckled with barnacles and lime, infested with sea-lice, with green seaweed hanging off it, it has cuts with blood, and its eyes were yellowed. All of these images paints a …show more content…

In the beginning, the fish was described as an eyesore to look at, but as the fisherman describes its insides it is more of a pleasant image to imagine. The fisherman then uses the medal comparison to show how he respects the fish more at the end than he did to begin with. The medal comparison shows how the fisherman feels a sense of pride because he has caught this fish that has been through several others lines, and is still alive. It is this sense of respect and pride that causes the fisherman to let the fish go. The fisherman has held the fish out of water the entire time he was examining it slowly bringing it closer and closer to death, but he feels that he cannot kill the fish because it has been through so much and has survived for so long and he does not want to be the one to kill it. Although, the oil rainbow coming from the boat could eventually kill the fish

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