Danielle Lim R36 An Analysis on Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish” January 3 2012

Elizabeth Bishop’s The Fish: Underneath the Brown Wallpaper

Elizabeth Bishop’s The Fish is a classical poem that centers on the idea of true beauty. The

persona is that of a man (or a woman since the gender is not really specified) on a fishing trip. The poem

begins with an account of how the persona caught a “tremendous fish”. The use of the word tremendous

to describe the fish poses as a contradiction to the next few lines in the poem, which states that the fish

“didn’t fight. He hadn’t fought at all.” It is definitely unusual how something possibly so big, implied by the

word “tremendous” could pose no threat at all.

In the next lines, the persona starts to describe the fish that he caught with more specific details.

The fish “hung a grunting weight, battered and venerable and homely.” “Grunting weight” coincides with

the word “tremendous” in the first line since it gives emphasis on the large size of the fish. The words

“battered” and “homely” give readers on image of a very unattractive fish possibly covered by bruises and

scars and yet it is still “venerable”. It may seem ironic at first how something so unappealing could be

considered so holy but it’s actually quite possible. Those injuries that marred the fish’s body may come to

represent all the obstacles in life it faced and overcame, enabling the fish to become well respected.

The persona, then, starts to take note of the fish’s brown skin and how it’s like ancient wallpaper

with “shapes like full-blown roses stained and lost through age.” Through this kind of description, the fish

is shown to be once again kind of dull and not really a pleasant sight. At the same time, however, it gives

importance to the fact that the fish wasn’t always like that but had once been as beautiful as “full-blown

roses”. The persona continues with his description by referring to the fish as “speckled and barnacles”.

Again, the fish isn’t portrayed to be something appealing. The word, speckled, means to be covered with

small spots of color while barnacles are crustaceans with their own external shells that feed by filtering

particles from water. They’re not exactly deemed to be lively and beautiful descriptions of a fish or

something related to it. However, once again, there is an interplay of contradictory statements since the

persona, then, refers to the barnacles as “fine rosettes of lime”. This presents a more positive and colorful

image and brings readers back to the earlier line where the fish’s color was compared to wallpaper with

“shapes like full-blown roses”. Afterwards, the persona proceeds towards the more negative aspect once

again about how the fish is infested with sea-lice and has green weeds attached to it. This is obviously a

painfully ugly sight. The next few lines then described the fish’s gills and how they were coping with the

fish’s capture. “Terrible oxygen” caused its sharp gills to be “fresh and crisp with blood”. This emphasized

the kind of critical danger the fish was currently in.

Next, the persona begins to imagine the innards of the fish. Realistically speaking, there is nothing

appealing about the innards of any animal, including a fish’s, but Bishop managed to enable readers to

look past that kind of reality and dive into the world of imagery. Instead of simply saying that the fish was

just white inside with a lot of bones, the persona states that inside the fish there is that “coarse white flesh

packed in like feathers”. The simile makes the inside of a fish seem much more pleasant than it really is.

The persona continues with the entrails of the fish. The lines “ the dramatic reds and blacks of his shiny

entrails, and the pink swim-bladder like a big peony” add more vibrant and colorful images of the inner

organs of the fish. Instead of normally looking disgusting to the viewer’s eyes, it became beautiful. The

word “dramatic” used with “reds and blacks” makes the entrails seem less dull. The comparison, through

a simile, of a bladder to a peony, allows a simple usually ignored body organ to seem more significant

and appealing to the sight.

Then, the fish’s eyes were given the focus. It is said that its eyes were large and yet shallow. There is

once again an irony or contradiction. Despite the size of the fish’s eyes, it can barely see. The irises were

“backed and packed with tarnished tinfoil”. This gives viewers an image of eyes whose sight is blocked by

the “tarnished tinfoil”. Next, the line “the lenses of old scratched isinglass” gives even more emphasis to

the fact that the fish is having difficulty seeing. Isinglass may refer to either some kind of gelatin obtained

from fish or a thin transparent sheet. There is some kind of pun used. Bishop used the word because it is

a part of the fish and at the same time has another definition that fits well with the poem. As a transparent

sheet, the isinglass is like a mirror or glass but it is “old” and “scratched” so the fish cannot see through it.

Basically, these couple of lines again added to the current perilous situation the fish is in as a prey of the

persona.

Lastly, the persona took note of the fish’s face. On the fish’s “grim, wet, and weaponlike” lip, there

were “five old pieces of fish-line, or four and a wire leader with the swivel still attached, with all their five

big hooks grown firmly in his mouth.” These lines tell the readers that the fish that the persona caught had

actually already been in the exact same position in the past. In fact, it has gone through the same ordeal

five times and every time was able to escape; hence, the “weaponlike” lip. However, when the persona

caught the fish, “he hadn’t fought at all”. It is possible that the fish was already tired of fighting tooth and

nail for his life over and over again so he didn’t even bother to put on a struggle anymore. The persona,

then, proceeds to comparing the fish hooks with their fish-lines to “medals with their ribbons frayed and

wavering”. Medals are usually given to those people of honor. This leads readers back to the beginning of

the poem wherein the fish was described as “venerable”. These five fishhooks on its jaw were like battle

scars – evidences of the fish’s victory and bravery against all impediments that crossed his path. The

metaphor, “a fire-haired beard of wisdom”, seemed another very suitable description of the five fish-lines

because the fish definitely learned from his past experiences and became more knowledgeable.

In the end, as the persona kept staring at the fish, it was like he (or she) suddenly realized its true

beauty. Though the fish may not look like much with its dirt, sea-lice, green weeds, scars, fishhooks, fish-

lines and bruises, he is worth much more than the biggest cleanest unmarred fish in the world. Each

injury that he carries tells of a story of survival and that is what makes him such a beautiful being that

nothing can ever compare to. When the persona realized this, it was like the magnitude of the fish’s

victory over the past obstacles in his life suddenly became too much to bear to the point that it spread

throughout the entire boat that the persona was in. It didn’t literally spread but it was like even the

different parts of the boat, itself, which were unappealing before to the persona’s eyes suddenly became

much more beautiful sights. “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!” The once plain old rented boat became so magnificent, alive and vibrant. All of this

supposedly happened in the eyes of the persona only because of the victory of a fish. Bishop probably

wrote this to emphasize how great this victory was that it changed the entire outlook of the persona on the

boat, the fish, and just about everything that life has to offer.

The poem finally comes to an end with the line, “And I let the fish go.” It may seem ironic why the

persona let go of something he worked so hard to catch but it actually was the best way to put an end to

this poem. By letting the fish go, the persona gave the fish another day – a chance for its true beauty to

be seen by others.