Preview

Analysis Of The Story 'The Fish' By Elizabeth Bishop

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
476 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Analysis Of The Story 'The Fish' By Elizabeth Bishop
The story “The fish” by Elizabeth Bishop is important that it portrays that beauty transcends physical existence and falls into the experience that the viewer has with the subject that is being displayed. The poem is in past tense because the point of view is coming from the main character after he realized he had a great appreciation for the fish and its beauty. The story portrays a story of a fisherman who has the rare opportunity to meet an amazing creature. This is why he describes the fish as “venerable”, “homely”, and “battered”. He also stated that the fish did not fight at all; which does not become significant until near to the end of the poem when he realizes that this “tremendous” fish has finally submitted itself and given up.
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Sand County Almanac Analysis
    • 931 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Sand County Almanac Analysis

    -First day disappointing -water low "teeter-snipe pattered about in what last year were trout riffles", and warm. - "asked for trout, got only chub" -That night, they remember a fork upstream, which was narrow and deep and spring fed. This was the Alder Fork. They fish it the next day. -First trout caught immeadiately. -Second requires deliberation... -bush over trout's head -must wait for wind to come up, to disguise line and fly. -with perfect execution, he is caught. -with perfect execution, he is caught. -event causes reflection on nature of | Forward fish and men..."ready, nay eager, to sieze upon whatever new things some wind of circumstance shakes down upon the river of time". "...and how we rue our haste". -Third fish is ultimate challange -"canopied in greenness", casting impossible. must be caught by drifting fly downstream from above. -does this from 30'above. -sets hook "imprudently pulls trout through alder stems..." "..no prudent man is a fisherman" -Fish were not large, chance to catch them was. Memory will be large. For awhile, he "had forgotten it would ever again be aught but morning on the…

    • 931 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Emotional Attachments In The Boat By Alistair Macleod
    • 632 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Emotional Attachments In The Boat By Alistair Macleod

    He fished for a living, to keep his wife happy, but he was never truly a fisherman. He did not enjoy fishing like the rest of his wife’s family did. His skin was not tough enough as “the salt water irritated his skin as it had for sixty years…and his arms, especially the left, broke out into the oozing saltwater boils”. (paragraph 60) The sun and wind took a toll on his body that the others did not experience. To him, the boat held emotions such as pain, despair and struggle. He would rather be inside, reading and learning, but was instead forced to…

    • 632 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Analyzing The Short Story 'Fish Cheeks' By Amy Tan
    • 186 Words
    • 1 Page

    Analyzing The Short Story 'Fish Cheeks' By Amy Tan

    Out of all the short stories that we've read this year, I felt like I connected most to the short story "Fish Cheeks" by Amy Tan. In the story Amy is attentive in trying to impress Robert, the minister's son. Her mother invites their family over for Christmas Eve dinner and since Amy is Chinese, her mother is cooking all of Amy's favorite dishes but, she is mortified that the minister's family is going to find her and her family strange. After reading the story. I understand where she's coming from when she paid too much attention to impressing a guy, that she's not even enjoying herself. I suspect that the author succeeded to project the concept that when you're too busy worry about someone else, you're not going to have a good time, then…

    • 186 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    How Does Coleridge Being Telling the Story in Part 1 of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner?
    • 956 Words
    • 4 Pages

    How Does Coleridge Being Telling the Story in Part 1 of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner?

    In the first line of this poem, we meet the protagonist, “The Ancient Mariner”, who manages to get hold of one of the guests to the wedding that he is attending in order to tell him the story of his journey on a “bright” and “cold” day. Against the will of the wedding guest, the Ancient Mariner spends the remainder of Part 1 describing his tale in detail; which eventually leads to the shooting of a magnificent and supposedly good omen of an albatross.…

    • 956 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Loch Ard Gorge and Summer Rain
    • 562 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Loch Ard Gorge and Summer Rain

    In the fourth stanza the poet describes what lies beneath the ocean. People look at nature as being beautiful but Foulcher’s uses the adjective ‘savage’ to describe the fish in the ocean as a symbol of aggression. The writer describes the depths of the ocean as ‘dark’ as well as the instinctive behaviour of the fish. The line ‘savage dark fish’ is a short intense line that creates a threating rhythm; this line is a strong symbol of people’s fear of the danger that exists in nature.…

    • 562 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Florida Key Poem
    • 854 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Florida Key Poem

    A simile is used when they say “given broad strokes of murder by a pelican lumbering shoreward, then diving with a splash like a car wreck, rising cradling a fish in his bill, and so emerging triumphant”. Although there is only one simile in this poem I believe this symbolizes a lot in the poem and about life. This effectively says how the pelican was determined to get the fish as food for survival and how the fish was helpless as part of this feat. It’s kind of like a cycle of nature. It is like survival of the fittest. Everyone needs different things in order to survive. The message of this explains how we must always be determined, never give up and we will be triumphant or victorious in life as the pelican was. We all strive to emerge triumphant in everything we do, it means doing the best we can always. For example I want to do well at college so I can have a good career in the future. Athletes always strive to improve and win every week, especially at the professional level, when they know their living wage depends on it. This is an example of survival of the fittest cause in the workforce or in the NFL if you don’t succeed or aren’t determined to make it, you’ll get cut and this is what this poem is telling us is you have to always be determined to succeed in life and have goals, just like the pelican had a plan of attack for how he was going to kill or “murder” the fish in order to survive, we…

    • 854 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    The Great Gatsby Dialectical Journal
    • 824 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The Great Gatsby Dialectical Journal

    Page 10. “Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.” I think the mere fact that a man of his age is so unyielding in his decision to continue fishing proves his own resolute determination. He is obviously encumbered by a number of physical weaknesses that come with old age, and yet it is this cheerful and undeafeated look in his airs that propels his entire character to continue on with what he loves: fishing.…

    • 824 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Holmes and Longfellow
    • 377 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Holmes and Longfellow

    In the first stanza, he speaks of a meteor of the ocean air, which I assume compares the boat to a great and speedy force. In the second stanza, he says that the ship is the “eagle of the sea”, which compares it to the national bird and shows it’s strength and dignity.…

    • 377 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    The Fish Figurative Language
    • 1191 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The Fish Figurative Language

    In lines 22-23, the speaker gives a detailed view of how the fish is in a near death experience and is fighting for its life. A small use of figurative language is used to describe the view of the fish’s gills as frightening (24). This proves how scared the fish was getting as it was almost down to its last breath. The gills are revealed as “fresh and crisp with blood” to continue to reiterate that death is on the way through imagery (25-26). This shows how man’s power can either be used for the better or the worse in the world. At this point, readers can see how the environment depends on the actions of human beings. The speaker then starts to think about the interior of the fish; they speak about its “white flesh”, “bones”, “black and red entrails” and “pink swim-bladder”. As the speaker looks into the fish’s eyes (34-35), the speaker makes note of how “shallow” and “yellow” its orbital area looks. In lines 37-40, the description of the eyes is continued. At this moment, there is a showdown between the narrator and the fish. Their eyes do not leave each other and the speaker starts to reconsider its actions. It is safe to infer that the fish’s eyes read desperation as it was facing death and was in need of a miracle. Once again, this establishes how much a person can influence the world through positive or negative actions. Bishop describes how sad the fish looked (45) and later emphasized on how intense it…

    • 1191 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Old Man And The Sea Quotes
    • 898 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Old Man And The Sea Quotes

    “He remembered the time he had hooked one of a pair of marlin. The male fish always let the female fish feed first and the hooked fish, the female, made a wild, panic-stricken, despairing fight that soon exhausted her, and all the time the male had stayed with her, crossing the line and circling with her on the surface. He had stayed so close that the old man was afraid he would cut the line with his tail which was sharp as a scythe and almost of that size and shape. When the old man had gaffed her and clubbed her, holding the rapier bill with its sandpaper edge and clubbing her across the top of her head until her colour turned to a colour almost like the backing of mirrors, and then, with the boy’s aid, hoisted her aboard, the male fish had stayed by the side of the boat. Then, while the old man was clearing the lines and preparing the harpoon, the male fish jumped high into the air beside the boat to see where the female was and then went down deep, his lavender wings, that were his pectoral fins, spread wide and all his wide lavender stripes…

    • 898 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    To Build A Fire, The Fish And The Story Of An Hour
    • 740 Words
    • 3 Pages

    To Build A Fire, The Fish And The Story Of An Hour

    “I'm not a literary writer who is wedded to notions of realism and fiction”, Christopher Rice. In the quote Rice is trying to tell us realism isn't always affiliated with fiction but within these collection of stories we explore and enhance the use of realistic techniques that develop and emphasize the themes in fictional narratives. In “To Build A Fire”, “The Fish”, and “The Story Of An Hour” and in the entire collection age of realism, realistic techniques are used to present and emphasize the themes. In “To Build a Fire”, the man exhibits pride throughout the text using vivid descriptions and realistic settings.…

    • 740 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway: A Novel with Infinite Interpretations
    • 809 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway: A Novel with Infinite Interpretations

    The old man hasn’t caught a single fish in eighty-four days, but he is still considered to be a great fisherman. He doesn’t seem particularly concerned that he hasn’t caught a fish in so long, and that the rest of the town mocks him, until that eighty-fifth…

    • 809 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Beware Of The Fish Book Review
    • 298 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Beware Of The Fish Book Review

    'Beware The Fish' is one of the funniest books I have ever read in my…

    • 298 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Compare and Contrast Paper
    • 1409 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Compare and Contrast Paper

    The Fish contrasts what Frost is trying to do here by telling what seems to be the end of the fishes journey. He has taken many different roads that have given him many different scars and medals as line 61 and 62 suggests, “Like medals with their ribbons/ frayed and wavering,” (Bishop p. 452) These poems are different in the way that they are comparing two very different moments in a journey. One at the start one at the end. Yet, they are the same because it shows the thoughts that are going through the mind of the characters as they make their decisions. The conflict that the fisherman has is what to do with the fish. It is a a trophy fish that he could be proud of and show off in his home. At the same time he knows…

    • 1409 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Moment of Exhilaration in Soul's on Ice
    • 537 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Moment of Exhilaration in Soul's on Ice

    When Doty starts the poem’s investigative process, “a terrific kind of exhilaration me (Doty)” takes place. The sentences in the poem, “distinguished from the other –nothing about them of individuality”, made the movement of his writing clear. Beginning with This moment of exhilaration is the catalyst that quickly led him to write two sentences: “one that considers the fish as replications of the ideal, Platonic Mackerel, and one that likewise imagines them as the intricate creations of an obsessively repetitive jeweler”. The pace picked up at this point, and after the idea had grown, Doty could let the poem write for itself. It seems as if the ideas in the poem fell onto paper before Doty even thought about them. Surprisingly, his writing presented ideas that amazed him too.…

    • 537 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More