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The Fish Figurative Language

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In the poem The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop, the author expresses a tone of sympathy for the fish after realizing that the fish had been caught many times before her. The author uses figurative language and Imagery to show how the fish really affected her choice to release it in the end. I think that the theme for this poem is that pride can help you make the right choices in life and help you become a better person.
One poetic device used by the author was figurative language, more specifically, similes. The author uses similes through the poem as a way to describe the fish that she has caught. An example of this would be when she said, “Here and there his brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper, and its pattern of darker brown was like wallpaper: shapes like full-blown roses stained and lost through age”, “Like medals with their ribbons frayed and wavering a five-haired beard of wisdom trailing from its aching jaw”. The author is describing how the fish is probably very old and has been swimming for a long time and has been caught at least five times beforehand. This kind of makes her feel sympathetic towards the fish after seeing in how bad of a shape he is in. …show more content…

The author is very descriptive when talking about the fish and really tries to help the readers understand what kind of a life the fish has had. She states in her poem that “he was speckled and barnacles, fine rosettes of lime, and infested with tiny white sea-lice”. This tells us that the fish was likely in a lot of pain because sea lice tend to sting. The author also states, “while his gills were breathing in the terrible oxygen—the frightening gills, fresh and crisp with blood,” which means the water in which the fish was living in was likely very dirty and contaminated. This shows how the author felt some empathy/sympathy for the fish at the end of the poem after seeing all the pain it is

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