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”The Fish” – A Tough Decision
Decisions are things that people make every day of their lives, and sometimes they are
not always the easiest thing to overcome. Sometimes these decisions can take a lot of time to
conclude, and more importantly, they can affect the other people (or things) around you,
depending on how you decide. While we face these tougher decisions, occasionally it only takes
a couple seconds to suddenly realize what the right thing to do is. For Elizabeth Bishop, these
valuable seconds of sudden realization (an epiphany) is just what she needed for one of her tough
decisions while writing one of her famed poems titled “The Fish”.
The poem tells about how someone (whether the character is male, or female is
unknown) catches a huge fish while fishing in a little rented boat. While holding it halfway out
of the water beside the boat, they spend almost the entire duration of the poem detailing the fish.
The first detail they take note of is how old and decrepit the fish looks. Besides the barnacles and
algae growing on it, the fisher also notices five other fishing hooks with the lines still partially
attached right beside their own hanging from its jaw. The fisher begins to consider how tough
this fish had to be to make it to it’s current age and begins to respect the fish. The poem ends
when an oil spillage from the boat makes a rainbow in the water and the fisher, overwhelmed
with emotion by the fish and the scene, lets the fish go.
This “overwhelming emotion” that the fisher from the poem feels is very similar to the
“moments of sudden realization” that we sometimes feel when dealing with tough decisions.
While the fisher man or woman examines what was probably the biggest and oldest fish in the
water, he or she seems to be contemplating keeping the fish or letting it go right from the
beginning of the poem, where the fish was being held halfway out of water for the first time, to
the very end of the poem, where the fisher finally decided to release the fish back into the water.
”The Fish” – A Tough Decision
Decisions are things that people make every day of their lives, and sometimes they are
not always the easiest thing to overcome. Sometimes these decisions can take a lot of time to
conclude, and more importantly, they can affect the other people (or things) around you,
depending on how you decide. While we face these tougher decisions, occasionally it only takes
a couple seconds to suddenly realize what the right thing to do is. For Elizabeth Bishop, these
valuable seconds of sudden realization (an epiphany) is just what she needed for one of her tough
decisions while writing one of her famed poems titled “The Fish”.
The poem tells about how someone (whether the character is male, or female is
unknown) catches a huge fish while fishing in a little rented boat. While holding it halfway out
of the water beside the boat, they spend almost the entire duration of the poem detailing the fish.
The first detail they take note of is how old and decrepit the fish looks. Besides the barnacles and
algae growing on it, the fisher also notices five other fishing hooks with the lines still partially
attached right beside their own hanging from its jaw. The fisher begins to consider how tough
this fish had to be to make it to it’s current age and begins to respect the fish. The poem ends
when an oil spillage from the boat makes a rainbow in the water and the fisher, overwhelmed
with emotion by the fish and the scene, lets the fish go.
This “overwhelming emotion” that the fisher from the poem feels is very similar to the
“moments of sudden realization” that we sometimes feel when dealing with tough decisions.
While the fisher man or woman examines what was probably the biggest and oldest fish in the
water, he or she seems to be contemplating keeping the fish or letting it go right from the
beginning of the poem, where the fish was being held halfway out of water for the first time, to
the very end of the poem, where the fisher finally decided to release the fish back into the water.
