Thursday, March 11, 2010

THE FISH

After reading "The Fish" by Elizabeth Bishop a person can learn to respect the life of a simple creature. The author compares this poor innocent fish that has been caught by a fisher to an old aging wise man; "Like medals with their ribbons frayed and wavering, a five-haired beard of wisdom trailing from his aching jaw." As the fisher is just standing there staring at the poor animal dangling from the line they realize by the look in the fishes eyes and the detail in the skin that the fish is still a part of the earth and has a right to live; as explained in "While his gills were breathing in the terrible oxygen — the frightening gills, fresh and crisp with blood"; so the fisher lets the fish go free and finish his journey in the sea.
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3 comments:

  1. debra penaMarch 11, 2010 at 9:02 PM

    this is true. i google the poem and i saw that someone wrote that it seems as she is describing a person in slavery.

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  2. tlMarch 12, 2010 at 9:11 AM

    This is getting toward a central conflict in the poem--its questioning of our appropriation of the non-human world for the purpose of attributing human value to it.

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  3. Bobby GMarch 4, 2012 at 7:51 PM

    You know those old men who sit on the benches on Ocean Parkway, who seem to be playing chess ALL day? The fish in the poem kind of reminds me of those guys. Wonderful men, they are, I'm sure of it. How I see it: After long lives of hard work; perhaps in the army, through the Great Depression, marriage, loss, and tough jobs, they seem to be taking it easy in retirement. They appreciate their lives, and celebrate by just hanging in there, relaxing with old chums, and declaring "checkmate" whenever possible because the opponent is half blind and change. The fish in Bishop's poem is kind of like that... hanging by a thread (literally), accepting its fate, just relaxing.

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