THE FISH I caught a tremendous fish and held him beside the boathalf out of water, with my hook fast in a corner of his mouth. Hedidn't fight. He hadn't fought at all. He hung a grunting weight,battered and venerable and homely. Here and there his brown skinhung in strips like ancient wallpaper, and its pattern of darkerbrown was like wallpaper: shapes like full-blown roses stained andlost through age. He was speckled with barnacles, fine rosettes oflime, and infested with tiny white sea-lice, and underneath two orthree rags of green weed hung down. While his gills were breathingin the terrible oxygen - the frightening gills, fresh and crispwith blood, that can cut so badly- I thought of the coarse whiteflesh packed in like feathers, the big bones and the little bones,the dramatic reds and blacks of his shiny entrails, and the pinkswim-bladder like a big peony. I looked into his eyes which werefar larger than mine but shallower, and yellowed, the irises backedand packed with tarnished tinfoil seen through the lenses of oldscratched isinglass. They shifted a little, but not to return mystare. - It was more like the tipping of an object toward thelight. I admired his sullen face, the mechanism of his jaw, andthen I saw that from his lower lip - if you could call it a lipgrim, wet, and weaponlike, hung five old pieces of fish-line, orfour and a wire leader with the swivel still attached, with alltheir five big hooks grown firmly in his mouth. A green line,frayed at the end where he broke it, two heavier lines, and a fineblack thread still crimped from the strain and snap when it brokeand he got away. Like medals with their ribbons frayed andwavering, a five-haired beard of wisdom trailing from his achingjaw. I stared and stared and victory filled up the little-rentedboat, from the pool of bilge where oil had spread a rainbow aroundthe rusted engine to the bailer rusted orange, the sun-crackedthwarts, the oarlocks on their strings, the gunnels- untileverything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow! And I let the fish go.Questions on Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish†1. Define the followingwords: venerable, barnacles, rosettes, sea-lice, entrails, peony,irises, isinglass, sullen, grim, swivel, fray, bilge, thwarts,oarlock, gunnels. 2. What is the subject of the poem and who is thespeaker? 3. Find all of the similes (a comparison of two thingsusing the words “like†or “asâ€) in the poem. Which of them, in youropinion, is the strongest and why? 4. Explain the following image:“Like medals with their ribbons/ frayed and wavering,/ afive-haired beard of wisdom/ trailing from his aching jaw.†Whatdoes she mean by “a five-haired beard of wisdom?†Why do you thinkBishop chose to use the word “medals?†5. Track Bishop’s use ofcolor in the poem. Find the instances where she mentions specificcolors. Why do you think that Bishop writes, “until everything/ wasrainbow, rainbow, rainbow!†towards the end of the poem? 6. Bishoprepeats words and phrases throughout the poem. Choose and instancewhere she uses repetition and explain how it contributes to thepoem. 7. Explain the tone (the speaker’s attitude about the subjectmatter) of the poem. Use evidence from the poem to support youranswer 8. What, in your thinking, is the strongest aspect of thispoem? Do you like the poem? Why or why not? 9. Fill in the outlineof a fish with 15 details from the poem. Please label each of thedetails. Feel free to add to the area around the fish.
