The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop

For me the speaker of The Fish, although ostensibly a fisherman, doubles as someone experiencing the thrill of 'catching' (in the sense of there being plenty more fish in the sea or someone being 'quite a catch') a suitor, maybe for the first time.

The poem is written in free verse with no consistent rhyme or metre. The use of free verse here and its original associations with liberation and naturalness support the idea of a person in an innocent state speaking. It is also all one stanza which reflects a curious, unstructured and wandering tone much like that of someone venturing into the unknown. The minimalist nature of the line lengths could also be associated with a child like or innocent-state form of narrative.

In the first line the speaker describes how they have caught a fish and then how they hold them 'beside the boat'. This holding beside the boat conjures a sense of wonderment at what has been discovered which the speaker than builds on throughout the rest of the poem. In line 3 the speaker describes how they have the fish 'half out of the water, with my hook'. The fact that this is their hook and that the fish is only half out of the water conveys a sense that the speaker is in control of this situation. Perhaps the fish has fallen for them?

This fish is not beautiful though. The speaker describes them as having a 'grunting weight' (line 7),  being 'battered' (line 8) and host to 'tiny white sea-lice' (line 19). But, it is an experienced fish described as 'venerable' (line 8) and having 'five old pieces of fish-line' (line 51) hanging from their lower lip - this wasn't the first time that they had been caught.

There then follows a more frightening experience for the speaker upon the casting of their eyes over 'the terrible oxygen, the frightening gills, fresh and crisp with blood' (lines 23-25). This sudden shock is for me the realisation that the speaker can have this fish if they want. This fish is a real, alive creature and not some plaything.

The speaker then describes in line 65 and 66 how they 'stared and stared / and victory filled up'. So the speaker is now aware that this fish is theirs if they want it, that this suitor wants them. At the last moment though a rainbow oil slick intervenes and the speaker lets the fish go. The idea of seeing an oil slick (potentially something bad) as a rainbow (something generally thought of as pretty, innocent and good) acts as the speaker's innocence and desire to stay pure winning out this time. This fish is let go, the next one may not be so lucky!

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