The Fish

Within Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “The Fish” the word “like” is used numerous times to describe certain physical features of the fish. More importantly, however, one must trace the transformation of “like” to describe how the fish goes from being regarded just as a typical brown ratty fish to gaining the respect it deserves as an actual human being, due to the life it has lived.

At the beginning of the poem, the word “like” is used to describe the skin the fish has on its aged body and how this physical feature displays an important characteristic of the fish. “Here and there his brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper, and its pattern of darker brown was like wallpaper: shapes like full-blown roses stained and lost with age.” This passage evokes to an understanding of what the fish looks like, and the ancient wallpaper that helps describe the age of the fish. This passage also helps lead into the next passage of the poem which describes what the inside of the elderly fish may contain. Bishop’s writes “ I thought of the course white flesh packed in like feathers, the big bones and the little bones, the dramatic reds and blacks of his shiny entrails, and the pink swim-bladder like a big peony.” The feathers in this passage give a very good understanding of the meat of the fish because it is something that we have all felt and can relate to the gentle touch of the feather. Even though the meat is packed together the fish is still soft and smooth to the touch. The peony illustrates the elaborate colors that make up the entrails of the fish that make the entrails stand out and very noticeable to the naked eye. “Like” serves, in these cases, not only to show the readers the inside of the fish, but also to create a sense of beauty. As the fisherman sees more beauty in the fish, the fisherman is able, in the next section, to relate to it.

Throughout the rest of the poem, “like” is used in a different fashion: to describe the transformation of the fish to some kind of human being. The first area in this section of poem where “like” is used to compare the fish to a human is when Bishop describes the eyes of the fish and how the fish could see the fate of its life coming before its eyes, “They (the eyes) shifted