The Fish
How is the fish characterized? Is it simply a weak victim because it “didn’t fight”? Comment on lines 65-76. In what sense has “victory filled up” the boat, given the fact the speaker finally let the fish go?
In this poem called “The Fish”, Elizabeth Bishop describes the experience of a man who caught a “tremendous fish” (1). I personally don’t think the fish is characterized as a simple victim. In the poem it describes how the fish didn’t fight to get away which gave the fisherman opportunity to take a closer look and realize that the fish already had another five hooks hanging from what he described a lip. This along with other features he sees on the fish like “his brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper” (10,11) tell us in a way that this fish has had a lot of experience in life, in other words someone that is mature and the hooks are proof of it. For us a sign of being mature and be experience is aging, like gray hair, wrinkles. I personally would rather get advice from someone that is older and has experience since a lot to times they have already gone through the same situation I am in and give me a better guidance.
In my opinion this poem talks about the story of a fish being caught as a way to describe to us how the older we are the more experienced we get about life and how to confront certain situations. As I mentioned before, when we see someone that is older with their gray hair, wrinkled face we assume they have more experience and tend to go to them for advice or even information about certain places or events that occurred before in the past and that they had the opportunity to live them. This fish because he obviously had been in this situation before decided to not fight back, probably had it been a young fish it would been pulling and trying to get away making the fisherman to want to fight back and ultimately get him out of the water. But because he was experienced in this type of situation he used it to his advantage which
In this poem called “The Fish”, Elizabeth Bishop describes the experience of a man who caught a “tremendous fish” (1). I personally don’t think the fish is characterized as a simple victim. In the poem it describes how the fish didn’t fight to get away which gave the fisherman opportunity to take a closer look and realize that the fish already had another five hooks hanging from what he described a lip. This along with other features he sees on the fish like “his brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper” (10,11) tell us in a way that this fish has had a lot of experience in life, in other words someone that is mature and the hooks are proof of it. For us a sign of being mature and be experience is aging, like gray hair, wrinkles. I personally would rather get advice from someone that is older and has experience since a lot to times they have already gone through the same situation I am in and give me a better guidance.
In my opinion this poem talks about the story of a fish being caught as a way to describe to us how the older we are the more experienced we get about life and how to confront certain situations. As I mentioned before, when we see someone that is older with their gray hair, wrinkled face we assume they have more experience and tend to go to them for advice or even information about certain places or events that occurred before in the past and that they had the opportunity to live them. This fish because he obviously had been in this situation before decided to not fight back, probably had it been a young fish it would been pulling and trying to get away making the fisherman to want to fight back and ultimately get him out of the water. But because he was experienced in this type of situation he used it to his advantage which