The Carp By Yun Wang Summary

The carp in Yun Wangs’ “The Carp” represents the pain and injustice of her father’s imprisonment. At the beginning of the poem, Wang talks about her father catching a large Carp. He was a principal and decided to give it to the schools kitchen so that the students and faculty could eat it. The carp as large, about 20 pounds. Wang says, “They had tasted the carp.” This meaning is very straight forward. They did taste the carp. And that’s all that this line means until further in the poem when Yun Wang describes her father being beat to near death by his old best friends (teachers, and students after finding out he had been having contact with his daughter. After this she says again, “ They had tasted the carp.” Many people don’t like carp because