THE FISH
The Fish – Elizabeth Bishop
-Lalith
Questions f Travel, The Complete Poems and Geography III.
What follows is an attempt at explication of her poem “The Fish”
I caught a tremendous fish.
The poet catches a big fish. Eye catching and I catching are different things of course. But if the fish has
to be deemed tremendous, it has to be caught by the eye (the vision) and the I (the ego).
Catching a fish is an act of the will, which requires some agency, an effort, which is the opposite of
inertia or passivity which seems to be the hallmark of the fish for some time.
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth
Here there is a delayed action, a propensity for observation, a meditation, an opening up of the faculty
of vision, a looking, a penetration. It is now an object of gaze, of inspection.
half in, half out of water…between life and death, between the good oxygen in the water and the
terrible oxygen outside it (for the fish can breathe only the oxygen in the water)
The hook fast in a corner of his mouth…deep, almost nailing the fish, now it is almost difficult for the fish
to escape the clutches of the hook, it is as if its fate has been sealed.
He didn’t fight.
He hadn’t fought at all.
One sentence in simple past and another in past perfect.
One expects a fight. At least one expects some kind of resistance, some show of tantrums, an effort at
survival. If the fish does not fight, it is against nature, against eros, the life instinct. It is here a sign of
thanatos, the death wish, death instinct. See also that the poet attributes a gender (He) to the fish. ‘He
hadn’t fought at all’ might indicate two things, one to show the absolute resignation on the part of the
fish, and the other an act of remembering on the part of the poet. It could also be an assertion on his part.
He hung a grunting weight
battered and venerable and homely
The poet could feel the weight of the fish, perhaps a foreshadowing of the weight on his conscience. The
fish on the other hand has loosened its hold on its life. It is hanging like a dead weight now.
The fish is battle-weary. It carries the scars of its experience almost as jewels in its crown. That makes it
venerable and homely. It is not something alien. It has had its share of hardships. Homely might indicate
its ordinariness in its appearance despite being tremendous in size.
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
Look at the repetition of brown and wallpaper. His white skin hanging in strips was like ancient wall
paper hanging in strips. Has to be ancient and almost worn out to hang in strips. The aged fish- almost
granddaddy like-which is the bearer of wisdom that comes from ageing, is now withering away. The
pattern on the brown skin is shaped like full-blown roses stained and lost. Full-blown roses indicate a
glorious and effervescent past when it was in full bloom. The stain and the loss indicate the inevitability of old age, the passage of time, degradation and death. Everything is like wall paper now, inanimate,
lifeless.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
The fish is covered or marked with a large number of small spots or patches of colour. Barnacles are tiny
marine creatures, related to crabs and lobsters. They tend to live in shallow and tidal waters, typically in
erosive settings.
See the picture of a barnacle below.
It is also covered with fine limestones shaped in the form of small roses. Not to speak of the sea-lice- the
parasitic, harmful organisms which also thrive on harming the fish. One could also see the green weed
that is also hanging down from the fish. (the rags)
These lines are a wonderful description of the tough environment which has had its impact on the fish. It
has amassed the scars of life in the form of barnacles, sea-lice, the green weed, and lime. The fact that it
has allowed these to cling on to it indicates the fish’s relative stillness, resignation and passivity of late. It
can also indicate that the fish has fought its battles with dignity and bears the ravages on its body. It is
awaiting its fate and is no longer in a position to care or complain.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
-the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly
All this while when the speaker was observing the fish with academic interest, it was grappling with its
life. His gills were breathing in the terrible oxygen as it was held half out of water and it could not
sustain itself on the atmospheric oxygen. After a moment’s attention to the fish’s predicament, the
speaker is back at his own game, that of observation where she is the centre. She describes the gills as
frightening as they were fresh and crisp with blood. They were dangerous too as they could cut or
wound sharply. Instead of the fish’s plight, now the speaker is worried about herself.
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
The seen and the not seen, the apparent and the hidden, The outside and the inside- the obvious and
the thought of- The poet now thinks of the coarse white flesh (coarse means rough or harsh in texture),
which are packed in like feathers. The poet imagines feeling the flesh too. Why is the poet not content
with describing what is plain before the eyes? The poet’s eye now works like a scanner or an X-ray
machine. Or is the poet placing the fish on a dissection table and imagines cutting him open? Whatever
it is, she sees the big bones and the little bones. The red and black of his shiny entrails- Entrails are
Intestines or internal organs. Look at the poet’s fascination with colors. The Swim bladder is pink. It is
like a big Peony. The Swim Bladder is the internal gas-filled organ that contributes to the ability of the
fish to control its buoyancy, and thus to stay at the current water depth without having to waste energy in swimming. Peonies are rose like flowers.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
The speaker continues his/her scrutiny on the fish. The First time their gaze is likely to meet in mutual
acknowledgement. But the poet is not looking at the eyes but rather into them. The description of the
physiognomy continues. The eyes are larger but not deep set. They are yellowed. Tin foil is akin to the
aluminum foil catches the light and reflects it. Because the author notes that it is "tarnished," the reader
gets the sense that it is a smoky-looking. Isinglass can refer to a transparent product made from fish
bladders or to sheets of mica, which are most often smokily transparent which also reflects light. It is
semitransparent whitish very pure gelatin like substance. So ‘the tarnished tin foil’, ‘scratched isinglass’
‘the shallower and yellowed’ all indicate a poor smoky vision for the fish compared to the human eye.
See how much attention the author pays to the details.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
-It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light
See that the fish is trying to avoid the stare. It is least interested in confronting the speaker. It just
averted its eyes towards the light
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw,
that from his lower lip
-if you could call it a lipgrim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung 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.
The admiring gaze of the speaker on the fish continues. Though the face is sullen, the poet still admires
it which indicates her lack of empathy for the moment. It is then that she observes the five old pieces of
broken fish-line hanging from the fish’s lower lip. Then the poet corrects it as four pieces of fish- line and
a wire leader with the swivel attached to it with all the five hooks stuck firmly in his mouth. The poet’s obsession with precision is evident here. The fish has obviously broken free of the previous attempts to
catch it. But it still carries the souvenirs of those encounters as broken pieces of fish-lines and the hooks attached in its mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
The gaze cannot be more precise than this. The poet goes on to describe the broken pieces of fish-lines,
their colours, their thicknes, even the strain and snap when the fish broke the line is made obvious to us.
It is picturised as a five-haired beard of wisdom and also as medals with ribbons attached.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where 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!
And I let the fish go.
Whereas in Wordsworth’s Daffodils, it is ‘I gazed and gazed’, here Elizabeth Bishop says I stared and
stared. The prolonging of the stare and the time taken for the courage, valour and the fighting spirit of
the fish to sink in to the poet’s mind are alluded to here. The victory that fills up the boat is however not
one of overcoming one’s adversary, the conquering of a war-veteran who had so far triumphed over all
attempts to catch it, but of an acknowledgement of the fighting spirit of the fish. Now it is the turn of
the poet to describe the various parts of the boat in detail; the engine, the bailer, the thwarts, the
oarlocks and the gunnels. The rainbow formed from the oil in the pool of bilge spreads engulfing the
whole of the boat and beyond. On the boat a thwart is a crosspiece used for a rowing seat, an oarlock a
metal holder for the oar, the gunnel (or gunwhale) is the top edge of the boat, whilst the bilge is dirty
water pooling on the boat bottom. The rainbow is the ultimate signifier of the undying spirit of the fish
and the camaraderie the poet feels towards it which results in her act of letting the fish go. It has fought
its battles bravely and it deserves a final redemption as an acknowledgement of its will to survive.
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