The Fish Gone Fishin :: Bishop Fish Essays

The Fish- Gone FishinThe Fish by Elizabeth Bishop is saturated with vivid imagery and rich description, which help the lecturer visualize the action. Bishops habituate of imagery, narration, and tone allow the reader to visualize the seek and constrain a bond with him, a bond in which the reader has a great deal of admiration for the fishs plight. The mental pictures created are, in fact, so brilliant that the reader believes incident actually happened to a real person, hence building respect from the reader to the fish. Initially the reader is bombarded with an intense image of the fish he is tremendous, battered, venerable, and homely. The reader is sympathetic with the fishs situation, and can relate because everyone has been fishing. Next, Bishop compares the fish to long-familiar household objects here and there / his brown skin hung in strips / like ancient wallpaper, / and its pattern of darker brown / was like wallpaper she uses two fables with common objects to creat e sympathy for the captive. Bishop then goes on to clearly illustrate what she means by wallpaper shapes like full-blown roses / stained and lost through age. She uses another simile here paired with descriptive phrases, and these effectively depict a personal image of the fish. She uses the familiar wallpaper comparison because it is some subject the readers can relate to their own lives. alike the ancient wallpaper analogy can refer to the fishs age. Although faded and aged he withstood the test of time, like the wallpaper. Bishop uses highly descriptive words like cloud and infested to create an even clearer mental picture. The word terrible is used to describe oxygen, and this is ironic because oxygen is usually beneficial, but in the case of the fish it is detrimental. The use of terrible allows the reader to visualize the fish gasping for breaths and fighting against the terrible oxygen, permitting us to see the fishs predicament on his level. The word frightening does essen tially the same thing in the next phrase, the frightening gills. It creates a negative image of something (gills) usually considered favorable, producing an intense visual with minimal words. Another simile is used to help the reader picture the fishs struggle coarse white flesh packed in like feathers. This wording intensifies the readers initial view of the fish, and creates a visual, again, on the readers level. Bishop next relates to the fish on a personal basis I looked into his eyes.