Imagery and Irony in Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish”
Small details are instrumental in seeing the bigger picture. This is apparent when reading “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop. Most often the reader experiences visual imagery in poetry. In this poem the reader encounters visual, auditory, and sensory imagery. “The Fish” is filled with minute details that paint a picture for the reader. With each new element that is introduced, it becomes easier to visualize the fish. The speaker is able to show the reader the beauty as well as the ugliness of this creature with her vivid imagery. The imagery used is so distinct that the reader can envisage being the fisherman and catching this fish. Another important element involved in this poem is irony. The reader might ask “why would the speaker take the time to catch the fish, only to set it free”? To begin it is important to show the differentiation of the types of imagery used in this poem.
As stated above imagery is the key aspect to this poem. The first aspect of imagery to examine is visual imagery. The speaker begins the poem by introducing the reader to the fish by saying “I caught a tremendous fish” (1). With the use of the word tremendous, it is easy to visualize a large fish. The next lines that create an image are “He hung a grunting weight, / battered and venerable, / and homely” (7-9). An illustration of a heavy, beat-up, ancient, and ugly fish is created in the readers mind by those three lines. The speaker then says; “His brown skin hung in strips, / like ancient wall-paper” (10-11). In this description it is easy to imagine the skin of the fish being rough, scaly and dark colored.
The imagery begins to become more defined as the poem progresses. For instance, she states “He ...
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.... There are important elements used throughout the poem such as; imagery, and irony that make this poem so interesting. Although the poem is interesting it does leave the reader wanting more. With that said, there are many questions left unanswered to the reader that may never be answered. For instance; why would the speaker take the time to catch the fish, only to set it free? Why did the fish not fight back after the many battles it had fought and won? Is the speaker victorious, or is the fish the real winner? Why would the speaker feel victorious for catching a fish that never gave her a fight? In many poems there are hidden meanings to be deciphered. This is true for “The Fish” as well as countless other poems. Discovering these meanings is part of the enjoyment a reader takes when reading. The answers are there to find, it just takes the use of imagination.
The poem begins with many examples of imagery and reveals an important role of the meaning of the poem. In the first four lines of the poem, Jeffers uses imagery to establish his connection between him and the bay.
"The Fish" is filled with poetic images all for the reason of making a powerful point,
William Faulkner overwhelms his audience with the visual perceptions that the characters experience, making the reader feel utterly attached to nature and using imagery how a human out of despair can make accusations. "If I jump off the porch I will be where the fish was, and it all cut up into a not-fish now. I can hear the bed and her face and them and I can...
A poem without any complications can force an author to say more with much less. Although that may sound quite cliché, it rings true when one examines “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop. Elizabeth’s Bishop’s poem is on an exceedingly straightforward topic about the act of catching a fish. However, her ability to utilize thematic elements such as figurative language, imagery and tone allows for “The Fish” to be about something greater. These three elements weave themselves together to create a work of art that goes beyond its simple subject.
In fact, the fish story has become a metaphor reflecting the technique used by Finney for expressing the difficult thing beautifully, to compress a poem choosing what should be kept in a poem and what should be thrown away (Finney, “Interview with: Nikky Finney”), to express whatever difficult feelings she has without much noise or rage. Finney sees activism as a basic part of her work.
The last poem “The Fish” illustrates the sorrow of life itself. The skin, the blood, the entrails, everything of the fish depicts vividly and dramatically. The poet seems to share the same pain with the fish observing the scene and enjoys the detail just like enjoying an artwork. The poet lets the fish go because she is totally touched by the process between life and death; she loves life but meanwhile, is deeply hurt by the life. In the poem, the fish has no fear towards her; the desire to life is in the moving and tragic details when faces the
The poem does this when it uses metaphor and personification. For instance, it states “when care is pressing you down it a bit. The silver tint of clouds of doubt.”
Imagery is a key part of any poem or literary piece and creates an illustration in the mind of the reader by using descriptive and vivid language. Olds creates a vibrant mental picture of the couple’s surroundings, “the red tiles glinting like bent plates of blood/ the
In poems, imagery is used to help get the writers’ message across in a language that is extremely visual. The poet wants
With fewer than fifty published poems Elizabeth Bishop is not one of the most prominent poets of our time. She is however well known for her use of imagery and her ability to convey the narrator?s emotions to the reader. In her vividly visual poem 'The Fish', the reader is exposed to a story wherein the use of language not only draws the reader into the story but causes the images to transcend the written work. In the poem, Bishop makes use of numerous literary devices such as similes, adjectives, and descriptive language. All of these devices culminate in the reader experiencing a precise and detailed mental image of the poem's setting and happenings.
The narrator speaks about the fish in terms of commercial, where every part of the fish can be sale for different purposes, but as the speaker look in the fish eyes, starts to compare the human life through the existence of the fish. What the speaker found beautiful about the fish is that as the speaker looks into the fish eyes and start looking in a different way to the creature, she starts to identify a living creature instead of a creature that will die imminently. The speaker starts seeing the beauty of the fish when she start to compare the fish to a soldier, when she sees through the eyes of the fish the victories over death that this creature has won, and I believe that the speaker compares her own battles and victories to the one of this creature in order to survive. I believe that the “ personality” of the fish is humble, brave and that this fish have been battling for a long time for his life, that he has been involved in some sort of violence many times in order to exist. I also feel that this fish is tired of fighting and that he is venerable to the speaker
Now the reader will be ready to tackle the poem again in order to notice and drink in its subtle nuances. Bishop's artistry will lie plain, particularly her capacity to impart life to a rather unnerving redundancy of objects and to project a lofty poetic vision from a humble, prosaic incident.
Along with the imagery we get from the title, there is a lot of imagery within this poem. Let us start with the first three lines:
The poet uses examples of imagery in this poem. The poet uses a simile in the first line of the first stanza to start off the poem. The simile she uses is ''the skin cracks like a pod''. The opening of the poem gives a clear message that something is severely wrong. A pod cracks with barely any resistance so the comparison to the skin is a unreserved statement outlining how easily the skin is. There is obviously a drought or a vast undersupply of water. The opening surprises the reader and gives an indication of what is to come. The poet uses a short and abrupt line which is effective
The construction of the poem is in regular four-line stanzas, of which the first two stanzas provide the exposition, setting the scene; the next three stanzas encompass the major action; and the final two stanzas present the poet's reflection on the meaning of her experience.