The Fishes and the Rainbow

By jonathan barker, Student

analysis of Elizabeth Bishop’s "The Fish"

An essay hosted at LiteratureClassics.com

Jonathan Barker

The Fishes and the Rainbow

In Elizabeth Bishop’s The Fish, she uses carefully chosen figurative language in order to connect the process of catching the fish to the much larger meaning of the holism of life in General. The experience of holding the power to extinguish the life of this majestic fish allows Bishop to come to an understanding of what the fish’s life means in respect to her own life and all the life around them. However, this experience is somewhat paradoxical in nature. Although it is the realization that she could bring the fish’s life to an end that makes her reevaluate the act of killing it, Bishop also makes it seem as though it was the essence of the fish’s life, which encompassed its history and continuation thereof, that truly makes her come to a larger realization. It was almost as though the fish’s means to survival was allowing its capturer to believe that it could destroy its magnificent life. In doing so, the fish relied on human nature’s intrinsic appreciation of the aesthetics of life in order to survive. Bishop figuratively illustrates the fish in such a way that it seems nothing more that the very act of comprehending the destruction of its ancient and beautiful life was needed to prevent its death.
Indeed, the fish remains calm and powerful while it’s life hangs by a thread. Its very presence seems to be slowly orchestrating its majestic nature over Bishop. It is as though the fish is in full control of the situation, pulling Bishop in to its command of respectfulness for its life. As Bishop says, the fish “hadn’t fought at all,” he merely “hung a grunting weight, battered and venerable and homely.” This weight that the fish hangs is on Bishops very consciousness, and is an example of how Bishop beautifully relates the act of catching the fish to it’s meaning within her using figurative language. Furthermore, this image illustrates the magnitude of the fish’s command on Bishop with nothing more than it’s being.
It was the fish’s strong presence that made Bishop think of its “coarse white flesh…the big bones and the little bones, the dramatic reds and blacks of his shiny entrails…” In this quote Bishop begins to display her conscious acceptance of the fish as a life form of equal magnitude to her own. In describing the fish’s physiology in such intricacy, she displays her newfound awe for the fish’s being.
Bishop’s respect for the fish continuous to surmount on itself until she looks into the fish’s eyes, which she describes as “far larger than [her own] but shallower, and yellowed…” It is at this point that Bishop comes to a fuller understanding of the importance of the life of the fish. Consequently, it is also at this point that the poem breaks into a separate column. Bishop makes it clear through her language that this breakage point at which she feels the full force of the fish’s energy was not easily attainable. Bishop uses the fish’s eyes figuratively as a sort of window into its soul. She describes the eyes as shallow, yellow, and “backed and packed with tarnished tinfoil seen through the lenses of old scratched isisnglass” in order to make it clear that her appreciation for the fish’s life drew her to a deeper, more perceptive level of thought. It was as though she was viewing a masterpiece through scratched, yellowed, thick glasses and could still understand the full magnitude of its beauty.
The intangibility of this intrinsic act of appreciation is brought to a more physical level when Bishop “admire[s] [the fish’s] sullen face, the mechanism of his jaw…[the] five old pieces of fish-line” in his lower lip. When Bishop observes these physical traits of the fish she describes it as though she was “tipping…an object toward[s] the light.” It is important that it was only after Bishop’s appreciation of the fish’s metaphysical soul or life essence that she than became fully enamored by its physicality. After Bishop finds the intrinsic beauty in the fish, she then can appreciate its outer beauty. Whereas before, she described the outer physical nature of the fish as being like “brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper, and its pattern of darker brown was like wallpaper,” she now realizes that she was looking at the fish on a very superficial level, much as wallpaper only serves to beatify something much more substantial. Because of this, wallpaper can only add an apparent beauty, not true beauty. The true beauty of the fish that Bishop comes to recognize comes only from its inner soul. Only after understanding this does Bishop recognize this and become fully awed by the stately nature of its outer physicality, which in some way reflects its strong and ancient inner life force.
The old fish lines that hang in the fish’s lower lip capture Bishop’s interest. She describes in great detail the way these old fish lines serve to represent something about the fish’s character. She figuratively describes them as “like medals with their ribbons frayed and wavering, a five-haired beard of wisdom trailing from his aching jaw.” These “medals” serve to represent the fish’s earning of respect and demand from Bishop that she view the fish in all its worthiness of a true artifact and treasure of life. This fish is a wise warrior as Bishop describes it, and has been through many battles, always victorious. Now its victory begins to manifest itself in Bishop. As she “stare[s] and stare[s]…victory fill[s] up the little rented boat.” It is a victory for Bishop as well as the fish because Bishop begins to realize the importance and connectivity of life. In the wake of this the material world begins to seem small to Bishop, and she describes the immaterial energy of this victory as filling up the “little rented boat.” The fish had survived so many captures like this one, and it is his commanding confidence towards the continuation of its life that draws Bishop in and allows her to feel and respect its awesome nature. In this way the fish seems to be one step ahead of Bishop. As she describes its calm and commanding manner, it knows that its life will not be compromised. However, it is the notion that she could destroy such a Precious life form that allows her to realize it as so and release it, hence the Paradox.
No longer does Bishop see only the roses that are “stained and lost with age.” No longer does Bishop describe the fish as being “infested with tiny white sea-lice, and underneath two or three rages of green weed.” Rather, through her experience of realizing the wholeness and connectivity of life through the handling of close death does she see “everything [as] rainbow, rainbow, rainbow.” It is here that Bishop again demonstrates her use of figurative language in order to draw a connection to the larger meaning that capturing the fish allows her to come to. It is no mistake that she describes seeing everything in terms of rainbow radiance. In fact, what is a rainbow but the breakdown of light? It is only through a rainbow that one can see the true connectivity that the different parts of light form in order to make it whole.
Bishop is making a strong correlation here to the manner in which she can now appreciate the beauty of light through the many colors of the rainbow to the way in which she now has a greater appreciation for all life in recognizing all the different forms of life for their individual and unified beauty. Bishop now views these smaller forms of life within a context of a manifestation of the holistic life force. Bishop will no longer encounter an apparently simple organism such as the fish without paying respect to its complexity and interplay with all life in the most grandiose scale.