The Full Text of “The Fish”
The Full Text of “The Fish”
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“The Fish” Introduction
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"The Fish" first appeared in Elizabeth Bishop's 1946 collection North & South. In this poem, a speaker catches a huge, astonishing fish and becomes fascinated with its primordial strangeness. When the speaker sees hooks caught in the fish's lip and realizes this ancient creature has already escaped five other fishers, the speaker decides, in a burst of joy, to let the fish go again. The poem celebrates the power and beauty of nature while also examining the ways that, to a human being, an animal can at once seem totally alien and deeply familiar.
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“The Fish” Summary
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The speaker remembers one day catching a huge, amazing fish and holding him up out of the water, hook still in the fish's mouth. The fish didn't struggle but just dangled there next to the boat looking beat-up, ancient, grand, and ugly all at once. His skin was peeling and raggedy as old, brown wallpaper, with blotches on it that looked like faded brown roses. He was all covered in growths and parasites, and strips of seaweed hung off his body. While he tried to breathe the air, which wasn't suited for him, through his sharp, dangerous, bloody gills, the speaker imagined his innards: his white, feathery flesh; all his different bones; his bright red and black guts; and his flower-like swim-bladder. Gazing into the fish's eyes, the speaker saw that they were huge, round, and shallow, and looked as if they were stuffed with old tinfoil, seen through a thin, scratched-up translucent coating. The fish's eyes moved a little, not looking at the speaker, just tilting a bit in the light. While admiring the fish's big heavy moody face, the speaker spotted five ancient, imposing fishhooks firmly embedded in the fish's blunt lower lip. There were still bits of broken fishing line dangling from these hooks, like old medals of honor, or like a wise old man's beard. The speaker just kept staring at this fish until it felt like all the parts of the rusty old boat were being filled up with a sense of victory, a feeling that spread over everything like the puddle of oil in the bottom of the boat, until everything the speaker saw seemed to be covered in rainbows. And then, the speaker released the fish back into the water.
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“The Fish” Themes
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Humanity's Kinship with Nature
The speaker of “The Fish” is at first just proud of their “tremendous” catch when they haul an ancient fish up out of the water. But while looking at that fish more closely and taking in all its strangeness, the speaker also starts to feel a strange kinship with the animal—a kinship that leads the speaker to eventually let the fish go. While animals might seem fascinatingly weird and alien, this poem suggests, it’s also possible for humans to feel deep, boundary-crossing empathy and respect for them. The poem illustrates how that empathy can be humbling, reminding people that, even if they might be used to seeing themselves as distinct from animals, they’re really in the same boat: animals and humans alike take part in all the mess, struggle, and beauty of life.
Displaying this amazing catch, the speaker immediately sees the huge fish they’ve hauled in as more than a prize. The speaker personifies the fish from the get-go, calling it “him.” And this “him” has a personality: the speaker notices that it doesn’t fight and that it seems to have lived a long, full life. While people might be inclined to see animals as plain old trophies (or as dinner!), the poem suggests, it’s hard not to also appreciate that animals are also alive and aware, living their lives just as people do.
That sense of empathy only gets stronger as the fascinated speaker examines the fish. The fish seems utterly alien at first: its skin hangs in rags, it has a “grim, wet, weaponlike” jaw, and it’s encrusted with barnacles. But even as the speaker looks at all the ways that the fish seems like a strange sea monster, the speaker relates those peculiar qualities to human things.
The fish’s eyes, for instance, are “far larger” than the speaker’s—but by comparing its eyes to theirs, the speaker subtly points out that eyes are a feature they share! The fish’s body also makes the speaker think of “wallpaper” and “tinfoil,” homey, human-made objects. Even the ways in which the fish is weird feel curiously familiar to this speaker.
In identifying with the fish, the speaker begins to feel a strange respect and empathy for it—a respect that comes to a climax when the speaker realizes that the fish has five fishing hooks embedded in its lip. Noticing this, the speaker begins to feel an overwhelming sense of “victory.” But the victory they feel isn’t their own victory over this fighter of a fish: it’s the fish’s victory, its survival against all the odds.
When the speaker finally “let[s] the fish go,” they seem to be sharing in that victory, full of empathy for the being whose life they’ve briefly touched. But they’re also relinquishing their human dominance, granting the fish real respect as a fellow creature of the world. By seeing this battered, ragged, grotesque old fish as a beautiful and fascinating equal, the speaker also gains a flash of “rainbow”-colored insight into the loveliness of life itself: the speaker is as much a part of the struggle and beauty of existence as the fish is.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-76
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Fish”
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Lines 1-9
I caught a ...
... and homely.From its very first line, "The Fish" gleams with relish and mystery. The speaker recalls catching not simply a big fish, but a "tremendous" fish—a word that suggests the fish was both huge and spectacular. This was a fish to remember, in other words, a fish to tell stories about. And the rest of the poem will indeed be the story of this speaker's encounter with that tremendous fish.
The speaker's first feeling about this fish is surprise. The fish doesn't seem to be struggling to get free, but hanging heavily from the line, looking "battered and venerable" as some grand old man. And, indeed, the speaker personifies the fish, calling it "him"—already seeming to feel not just pride in having caught such a monster, but connection and fellow-feeling with this peculiar creature.
As it will turn out, it's not just the speaker that catches the fish, but the fish that catches the speaker. Right away, the speaker seems fascinated by the fish: its strangeness snags the speaker's attention just as firmly as the speaker's hook holds "fast in a corner" of the fish's mouth.
As the poem's free verse takes shape, forming one long column of short lines, it reflects the speaker's intense, minute attention to all this fish's details. This will be a poem about the "tremendous" things that can happen when one really stops to look hard at the natural world.
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Lines 9-15
Here and there ...
... lost through age. -
Lines 16-21
He was speckled ...
... weed hung down. -
Lines 22-26
While his gills ...
... cut so badly— -
Lines 27-33
I thought of ...
... a big peony. -
Lines 34-40
I looked into ...
... old scratched isinglass. -
Lines 41-44
They shifted a ...
... toward the light. -
Lines 45-55
I admired his ...
... in his mouth. -
Lines 56-64
A green line, ...
... his aching jaw. -
Lines 65-74
I stared and ...
... the gunnels— -
Lines 74-76
until everything ...
... the fish go.
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“The Fish” Symbols
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The Rainbow
The rainbows at the end of the poem symbolize hope and beauty.
Rainbows are an ancient image of loveliness emerging from difficulty. (For instance, a rainbow heralds the end of the great flood in the biblical story of Noah's ark.) It's thus especially significant that the speaker first sees a rainbow the speaker in the oil-streaked "bilge" at the bottom of the boat. This image of beautiful iridescence shining on top of an oily mess feels a lot like what the speaker understands through gazing at the fish: even the strange, ugly, painful difficulties of life can seem gorgeous, when looked at with careful and unjudgmental attention.
Seeing "everything" lit up with "rainbow, rainbow, rainbow," the speaker thus seems to see the enduring beauty of life.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 69: “where oil had spread a rainbow”
- Lines 74-75: “until everything / was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!”
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The Fish
The fish itself symbolizes persistence, endurance, and wisdom—and perhaps even represents the speaker.
This poem's fish is a survivor. Not only is it ancient, it had to work hard to get that way: with five hooks embedded in its lips, it's clearly made it through many battles. And in the speaker's eyes, its struggles have shaped it. The fish-lines dangling from its lip seem like a "five-haired beard of wisdom"—an image of the way that suffering can mold and mature a personality.
The speaker's deep empathy for this "venerable" old fish suggests that they see themselves in it, too: like this fish, the speaker has perhaps fought some hard battles and lived to tell the tale.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 1-64
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“The Fish” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Personification
By personifying the fish, the speaker draws attention both to the ways in which the fish seems human and the ways in which it seems deeply alien.
There's something a little strange about using the pronoun "he" to refer to a creature whose "brown skin h[angs] in strips / like ancient wallpaper," and whose "grim, wet, and weaponlike" lips are full of hooks. A lot of fishers would probably be more likely to think of such a catch as an "it"—especially if that catch were as monstrous and timeworn as this fish seems to be.
But the strangeness is exactly the speaker's point. Looking at this peculiar, ancient fish, the speaker marvels at everything that's weird and striking about him—and it's through that weirdness that the speaker begins to feel a strange fellow-feeling with him. Delighting in how strange the fish is, the speaker just kind of starts to like him on his own terms!
It's thus precisely because it's odd to relate to a creature so totally unlike a human that the speaker keeps calling this fish a "he." The speaker's experience in this poem is all about being so struck by the detailed strangeness of this fish that they begin to feel a peculiarly personal connection with it.
Where personification appears in the poem:- Lines 2-7: “and held him beside the boat / half out of water, with my hook / fast in a corner of his mouth. / He didn't fight. / He hadn't fought at all. / He hung a grunting weight,”
- Lines 10-11: “his brown skin hung in strips / like ancient wallpaper,”
- Line 16: “He was speckled with barnacles,”
- Lines 22-23: “While his gills were breathing in / the terrible oxygen”
- Lines 30-31: “the dramatic reds and blacks / of his shiny entrails,”
- Line 34: “I looked into his eyes”
- Line 45: “I admired his sullen face,”
- Line 60: “when it broke and he got away.”
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Imagery
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Simile
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Metaphor
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Enjambment
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Repetition
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Assonance
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Alliteration
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"The Fish" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Homely
- Venerable
- Swim-bladder
- Tarnished
- Isinglass
- A wire leader with the swivel still attached
- Crimped
- Bilge
- Bailer
- Thwarts
- Oarlocks
- Gunnels
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(Location in poem: Lines 8-9: “battered and venerable / and homely”)
A little bit ugly.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Fish”
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Form
"The Fish" is written as one long stanza of 76 lines. That continuous shape evokes a few things:
- Subtly, it might suggest the long body of the massive fish that the speaker just caught.
- It also suggests just how captivated the speaker feels by this fish: the speaker is so enthralled that there's simply no time for a stanza break.
This seemingly endless stanza pulls readers down the page, taking them along on the speaker's emotional journey with the fish:
- At first, they're just delighted to have caught such a massive fish;
- Then, they get caught up in its strange, ancient beauty;
- Then, they notice that it's a real old-timer, a survivor of many past battles;
- And finally, struck with a strange joy, the speaker decides to release their fabulous prize back to its life in the water.
Choosing not to separate these different stages of feeling into different stanzas, the speaker makes this change of heart feel gradual: it's a decision that slowly creeps up on the speaker the longer they look at this wonderful fish.
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Meter
"The Fish" is written in free verse, so it doesn't use a meter. The speaker's language feels conversational and unrehearsed—like they're just riffing off the cuff.
But while there's no regular rhythm here, most of the lines are about the same length: short! That means the poem looks like one narrow column on the page, a shape that reflects the speaker's intense focus and absorption. All these brief lines in a row mirror the speaker's way of looking the fish over, bit by tiny bit.
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Rhyme Scheme
Written in free verse, "The Fish" doesn't have a rhyme scheme. As with the poem's lack of meter, this keeps things feeling casual and conversational. The story feels immediate and urgent rather than carefully crafted and rehearsed.
But that doesn't mean it's rhymeless! The poem's frequent internal rhymes and slant rhymes help to heighten its emotion.
For example, take a look at the rhymes in lines 34-37:
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
[...]
the irises backed and packedComparing their own eyes to the fish's eyes, the speaker notices both similarity and difference—just like the similarity and difference of the slant rhyme between "eyes" and "mine." And the dense internal rhyme of "backed and packed" evokes just how full of that silvery tinfoil shine the fish's eyes appear.
Now listen to what happens at the very end of the poem:
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels—until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.Here, the speaker does break into rhyme, for just a brief harmonious moment—a moment that reflects their delighted appreciation of the fish and their sense of connection with it.
In other words: the rhymes in this poem flash out to highlight moments of particularly intense feeling and observation.
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“The Fish” Speaker
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Everything the reader learns about this poem's speaker is internal and emotional. The speaker has no gender and no backstory: all readers know is that this is someone who rented a fishing boat for the day. Still, it's clear that this speaker is sensitive and keenly observant, able both to paint a meticulous word-portrait of the fish and to feel a joyfully empathetic "victory" when they let it go.
It wouldn't be unreasonable for readers to interpret this speaker as Elizabeth Bishop herself, a poet known for her intense attention to detail and her joy in the natural world.
But all readers really need to know about this speaker is that, whether or not they're literally a poet, they're unquestionably poetic: they're a person who sees the world with blazing clarity, and wants to share what they see.
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“The Fish” Setting
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"The Fish" is set in a creaky old fishing boat—a rental that has perhaps seen better days. The speaker is so caught up in their observations of the fish that readers don't really get a good glimpse of this boat until the very end of the poem. In the last few lines, on the verge of letting the fish go, the speaker observes leaking oil "spread[ing] a rainbow" in the dirty water sloshing around the boat's "rusted" engine and its "sun-cracked thwarts."
All in all, this boat seems about as weathered and battered as the "venerable" old fish the speaker catches. Perhaps this subtly underscores the fact that the fish and the speaker are, for a moment, "in the same boat" both metaphorically and literally!
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Fish”
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Literary Context
Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) was one of the most distinctive voices in 20th-century poetry. During a period when Confessional poets like Sylvia Plath and Robert Lowell were writing intensely personal poems about their inner lives, Bishop took a different tack, looking outward to record the beauty and strangeness of the world around her. Her poetry is noted for its rich detail, its subtle emotion, and its objectivity.
While Bishop's style was pretty different from Robert Lowell's, the two poets were good friends. Like Wordsworth and Coleridge, they were opposites who attracted, balancing each other out. They had a peculiar friendship: after getting to know each other at a party when they were in their 30s, they rarely met in person again, instead exchanging long letters and critiques of each other's work.
The poet Marianne Moore was also an important friend and colleague, and balanced Bishop in the other direction. Where Lowell tended to write intimate, confessional poems, Moore was even more reserved and detailed than Bishop (though also prone to adventures: famously, Moore and Bishop once concocted a scheme to pluck hairs from the tail of a baby elephant). And Moore also wrote a poem about a fish: compare and contrast!
Bishop won many honors over the course of her long poetic career, and references to her influential work appear everywhere from the novels of Nicholson Baker to the TV series Breaking Bad.
Historical Context
Elizabeth Bishop had a difficult, traumatic early life: her father died when she was only a baby, and her mother was institutionalized not long after. She lived with her mother's parents in Nova Scotia until her father's family (whom she hardly knew) demanded custody, and at the age of six, she had to move to Massachusetts to live with them. She bounced between cold and often abusive households until she finally escaped to Vassar College, where she met Marianne Moore and, inspired, began to develop a whole new style of writing.
The wider 20th-century world around Bishop was just as chaotic and troubled. She lived through World War I, World War II, and the turbulent 1960s and '70s. But for the most part, the painfully shy Bishop strove to avoid the outside world: she was most at ease when traveling to secluded islands, or holed up in the Library of Congress (where she worked for a time as a poetry consultant).
All through these difficult times, poetry was Bishop's escape and solace. The exquisitely detailed portrait of the fish in this poem suggests that pure, focused attention was one way she learned to transcend an often painful life.
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More “The Fish” Resources
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External Resources
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to Elizabeth Bishop reading the poem out loud.
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"Elizabeth Bishop's Art of Losing" — Learn more about Elizabeth Bishop's personal life in this article from the New Yorker.
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Bishop's Biography — Read more about Bishop's life and work at the Poetry Foundation.
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Bishop's Legacy — Learn about Elizabeth Bishop's enduring influence.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Elizabeth Bishop
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